Researching to see if I can refute this ..McCain advisor blames Dems for financial crisis....

[Progressive_In_NC]

THis dude is a freakin McCain campaign advisor, and a Bloomberg columnist. I'm trying to check his facts because I'm sure that most of it is not true. Pipe in if you can help.....




http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aSKSoiNbnQY0

snip
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What happened next was extraordinary. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets.

If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.

But the bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn't even get the Senate to vote on the matter.

That such a reckless political stand could have been taken by the Democrats was obscene even then. Wallison wrote at the time: ``It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit. The Democrats and the few Republicans who oppose portfolio limitations could not possibly do so if their constituents understood what they were doing.''

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snip
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But we now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.

Throughout his political career, Obama has gotten more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who received more than $165,000.

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snip
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Oh, and there is one little footnote to the story that's worth keeping in mind while Democrats point fingers between now and Nov. 4: Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess.
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Idiots.

[louis-t]

1. Oh, I see, it's the Democrats that are against regulation!

God, these so-called people make my head hurt.

[Progressive_In_NC]

2. So-Called People? Stop being so freakin nice....NT

[Frosty1]

3. Here is how I responded to the same kind of BS

Democrats outdid Republicans last year in attracting political donations from investment banks, brokerages and fund managers for the first time since 1994, helped by support from hedge funds and companies such as Merrill Lynch & Co.

Democrats got $13.6 million, or 52 percent of the financial industry's $26.3 million in political donations in 2005, said the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan Washington group that researches the influence of money on elections and public policy. In the two years leading up to the 2004 presidential election, Republicans received 52 percent of the $91.6 million given by the industry.

``Wall Street wants change'' on issues such as the Iraq war and the budget deficit, said James Torrey, chairman of the Torrey Funds, which manages about $1 billion. ``I'm finding people who are registered Republicans who are saying to me, `what can I do to help?'''
The Iraq war and ethics problems among congressional and executive-branch Republicans have helped drive President George W. Bush's public approval ratings to the lowest point of his presidency. That has spurred donations to Democrats, said Orin Kramer, general partner of Boston Provident Partners LP in New York and a longtime Democratic fund-raiser.

`Party With No Power'

``When the party with no power can raise more money than the party with all the power, it means people are pretty disturbed about the country's condition,'' Kramer said. The Democrats got 51 percent of the industry's funds in 1994, the year they lost control of both houses of Congress. Republicans' share rose from then, peaking at 58 percent in 1996.



It kind of sounds to me like Wall street goes back and forth with donations between the parties depending on what Wallstreet wants.
Personally I think this should be illegal. Campaign finance reform is long overdue all the way around. The powers that be seem to manage to keep the people fighting back and forth over who gets more while they all make out like bandits plus it opens the door to corruption on both sides.
I'm trying to look into the Fannie mae freddie mac but there is more than one issue of contention and I don't know which one you are referring to. Is it campaign contributions or Lobby money you are referring to?
It would help if you could be more specific where this information comes from. Again like the Wallstreet money It appears that Fan And Fred are split between the parties. If they (the powers that be) can keep us (we the people) fighting over our slices of the pie we will not notice that they are taking most of the pie.
I think before we the people can make this a better world we the people are going to have to put our collective foot down and do something about the corruption in all political parties. "

[edhopper]

4. Want to refute it?

Here is what the same American Enterprise Inst. said about this bill in 2005.

HR 1461--a bill that was supposed to create a “world class regulator”--is in fact a world class failure. Not only does it fail to improve significantly upon the regulatory authority of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), but it actually increases the opportunities for Fannie and Freddie to exploit their subsidies in order to expand into other areas of residential finance. While the bill makes some modest improvements to the weak regulatory structure of OFHEO today, these improvements do not bring the authority of the new regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the level currently exercised by federal bank regulators. Moreover, the deficiencies of the bill so far outweigh its modest regulatory improvements that the taxpayers and the economy generally would be better off with current law. Under these circumstances, unless there is a reasonable chance that the bill can be strengthened on the House floor, in the Senate, or in conference, it does not deserve to proceed further in the legislative process.


http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.22705/pub_detail.asp

There hypocrisy knows no bounds.

[lpbk2713]

5. Obviously he just emerged from a time warp.

Someone needs to tap this asshole on the shoulder an tell him that is was the rethuglicans that had complete control of all branches of government for seven years and that it is their greed, ineptitude and corruption that got us in the mess we are now in.

[Frosty1]

6. Blame game

Republicans have been in control of congress for 12 of the last 14 years
Bush has veto power, Dems can't overcome that.
2 years of Democratic majority in the House and razor thin majority in the Senate aren't going to fix a step by step dismantling of the New Deal over the past 28. This crisis is a result of deregulation to the point that corporations were making up the rules as they went along. This was a greed driven departure from the fundamentals of a proper economy. The Republicans thought that an entire economy could be made without producing anything tangible. Wealth was built on speculation and crooked accounting. A house of cards that was bound to fall. I think some Democrats were complicit in this fiasco, but the masterminds behind it were definitely Republican.
If the economy was so great before '06 elections, why did the Republicans lose so badly???
I would like to know exactly what legislation did the Dems pass in the last two years that ruined the economy?
Since the Republicans have set a record for fillabusters, the Dems have not passed one single piece of significant legislation. So, what, exactly, caused it?
Most of the deregulation happened with a fully GOP controlled government.
Deregulation of the airlines.

Deregulation of energy.

Deregulation of the financial industry.

Deregulation of the mortgage lenders.

Deregulation of the insurance industry.

Combine that with tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and corporations, and the switch from a $350 billion surplus to a $500+ billion deficit in just 6 years.

[lpbk2713]

7. The last paragraph in the article sums it all up .... No further comment necessary ... LOL.

(Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. He is an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election. The opinions expressed are his own.)

[melody]

8. He's an idiot ... why bother?

You could talk all day to your cocker spaniel and make more headway than with him.