When you step back and take a deep breath over the sad state of economic affairs in America, and you wonder why, when you are working so doggone hard, the nation as a whole could be in such dire financial straits, you need to consider the following:
FIRST: What Senator John McCain said back in 2006! Quote, “For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac– known as Government-Sponsored Entities or GSE’s–and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO’s report solidifies my view that the GSE’s need to be reformed without delay. I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S.190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.”…………THIS WAS TWO YEARS BEFORE OUR CURRENT MELTDOWN………..!!!
SECOND: What Senator Barack Obama did since 2006! Barack Obama has received the SECOND highest amount of lobbyist money to keep federal regulators off the backs of the lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Senator who received the HIGHEST amount from mortgage lobbyists was Obama’s close friend and colleague, Democratic Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut. Coming in a close third, was Obama’s ally and staunch supporter, Democratic Senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry. See a trend?
THIRD: What three close Obama associates ‘worked for’ and received subsequent mind-boggling multi-million dollar payouts from either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac? Franklin Raines, Democratic confidante and supporter, and former Clinton White House Budget Director, ran Fannie Mae, quit, and collected FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS! Jamie Gorelick, an Obama Democratic colleague and Clinton Justice Department official, who had no background in finance, joined Fannie Mae, worked there for six years, and left with over TWENTY-SIX MILLION DOLLARS! Jim Johnson, a ranking Obama counsel, who served as Obama’s economic advisor and who initially ran Obama’s vice-presidential search, collected multiple millions through Fannie Mae and its partner, the embattled Countrywide Mortgage, while serving as Fannie Mae CEO!.. A trend or a conspicuous coincidence? And doesn’t this stop any reasonable person in their tracks…!?!
FOURTH: What do three prominent democrats, Charlie Rangel, Angelo Mozilo, and Barney Frank have to do with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, IndyMac, or AIG? In early 2007 super-giant lender AIG, was seeking a federal government bailout from impending bankruptcy. During this search they donated TEN MILLION DOLLARS to the tax-troubled Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means, New York Democratic Congressman Charlie Rangel, to build his very own “Charles B. Rangel Center.” Months later, the federal government, with Rangel support, injected EIGHTY FIVE BILLION DOLLARS into AIG, making it the biggest market intervention ever by our government! Angelo Mozilo, a Democratic activist and friend of Barack Obama and a business associate of the aforementioned lobbyist donees Senator Chris Dodd and former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson, was the co-founder of the infamous IndyMac bank, the FBI-investigated financial institution which, in July of 2008, became the second largest bank failure in U.S history. Mozilo made over ONE-HALF BILLION DOLLARS combined, from selling his Countrywide Mortgage shares and from IndyMac compensation. Maybe it’s a coincidental trend! In early 2008, Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Barney Frank, House Financial Committee Chairman and close working colleague of fellow Massachusetts Democrat and mortgage-lobby recipient, Senator John Kerry, in a plea to help disadvantaged but ‘unqualified’ borrowers get home loans, pushed to get a bill through the House of Representatives which greatly ‘loosened’ mortgage market restrictions and ‘strengthened’ mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. His proposal called for the Federal Housing Authority to insure mortgages for even the riskiest and least credit-worthy borrowers, and as written, would bail out speculators! You WISH it was only a trend…!
FIFTH: What did ex-President Bill Clinton have to do with this financial crisis? Back in the early 1930’s after the stock market crash of 1929, Congress passed what was called the Glass-Steagall Act. Later, in 1956 they passed the Bank Holding Company Act. An over-simplification is to say that these two pieces of legislation were enacted to keep banks and securities firms from getting too cozy with one another where possible conflicts of interest and the chance of cronyism could manifest. Over the past fifty years however, there has been a slow progressive change in our government’s economic values with a gradual movement toward loosening those regulations. It all came to a head in 1999, when then Democratic President Bill Clinton signed The Financial Services Modernization Act, which basically repealed the once protective legislation, by removing the wall between banks, security firms, and insurers. They could once again cozy up with one another, get bigger and monopolize, and the resulting outcome has been shady backroom alliances, irresistible low rates, loans to near-indigents, turning a profit-blinded eye away from rising problems, and skuzzy political payoffs (as mentioned above in the now, ‘trend of conspicuous coincidence’).
LAST: What are you going to do about it? This is the classic story of how to cook a frog. You don’t drop him in boiling water because he’ll jump out. You put him in warm water and slowly heat it to boiling and he’s cooked before he knows it. Well get ready folks, because you’re the frog…! The water is warm now—you may be stretched a little for groceries, and you might be waiting an extra day to put gas in the tank, and you can postpone that needed doctor visit by eating better and doing more exercises, but in reality, food prices are still rising, gas will only get more expensive, and like it or not, you’ll need that physical. And the water is going to get warmer. At this point I’d keep my eye on who’s doing the cooking. You’ll begin to feel the heat as your indifferent representatives continue to live the cool life of privilege while ignoring your pressing needs and refusing to help you out by tapping America’s energy resources. You’ll really fidget in the pan when the Saudis and the Russians actually decide to get nasty with petro-politics. Now I think it would be smart to concentrate less on the heat and really think more about who put you in the pot. It will get even hotter in the next decade if we devolve from small-business capitalism to big-government socialism and the enlarging government freebie programs will need to be paid for by the shrinking electorate, mainly you, you generous soul. But the coup de grace will be the steady slow burning pain in the next year, or five years, or more, as you work harder, but pay away more of your income to cover the ‘FREE’ ONE-HUNDRED-FIFTY-TWO BILLION DOLLAR (“your one-hundred fifty-two billion before they gave it to you!”) stimulus package and the THIRTY BILLION DOLLAR (“your thirty billion dollars!”) government backed bailout of the greedy bloodsuckers at Bear Stearns. Then as you sweat to help your government (which is you!) cover Fannie Mae’s tragic loss wherein FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS (“your fifty million dollars!”) was given to Democrat Franklin Raines…, and you endeavor to give a greater percentage of your paycheck to help your government reimburse Fannie Mae’s horrible setback where TWENTY-SIX MILLION DOLLARS (“your twenty-six million dollars!”) was given to Democrat Jamie Gorelick…, and you sweat to pay from your scorched wallet, the ashes of a once powerful dollar, to cough up enough in taxes to cover the EIGHTY-FIVE BILLION DOLLARS (“your eighty-five billion dollars!”) given to AIG (and of course the incidental TEN MILLION DOLLARS [also “your ten million dollars!”] given to the vainglorious Democrat Charlie Rangel). In other words, your personal blood, sweat, and tears, and the dreams your forefathers and mothers struggled for, and all the moral causes patriotic veterans died for, and every venerable value American life has been built upon, and even your own personal concept of freedom is about to be slowly, heatedly drawn out of you in your coming years as you will pay, in increasing volume, and by sheer necessity, for all the immoral, self-serving, despicable, and slimy practices put into place and adhered to by the above-mentioned Democratic political/criminal scumbags and many more of their nasty back-kitchen conspirators who have now placed about a half-trillion dollars of burden, like chopped scallions, in your gullible red hot pot! Don’t you think, before this stew reaches the boiling point we should fire the dirty, shiftless, sleazy cook? ………..……………………..Kelcy Allen…Kirkland, Washington…Sept. 19, 2008………………………………