Blaming the financial crisis on the reformers
On Saturday, September 6, Sarah Palin warned us that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had become “too big and too expensive to the taxpayers”. The Democratic blogs and newspapers went into full frenzy: “Gaffe!” cried the Huffington Post. “Palin gloriously, fabulously unfit for duty” said McClatchey Newspapers a few days ago. Fannie and Freddie are private companies! They don’t cost the taxpayers anything!
But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac aren’t private companies. They’re “government-sponsored enterprises” whose mistakes cost the taxpayers money. On Monday morning some of those headlines remained visible, but few new ones appeared: the news had hit that the taxpayers were going to have to pay hundreds of billions for Fannie and Freddie. Palin was right. Nor was this a surprise: the blank check had already been authorized by congress over the summer.
Now the Obama campaign is blaming President Bush for the lack of oversight, and trying to smear McCain with that blame. But it’s not surprising that McCain’s vice presidential candidate would be calling for Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac reform: thirteen years ago, McCain tried to privatize the FMs before they became a crisis. Democrats blocked it. And it isn’t even fair to blame Bush: five years ago Bush tried to create an oversight agency for the FMs, and Democrats blocked that, too. Two years ago, McCain tried once again to reform them; it never made it out of committee.
Maybe it’s time we started paying attention to their warnings on social security, before that becomes a crisis?
- Whose policies led to the credit crisis?
- “What many do not recall is that Bush wanted to tighten oversight with a new regulatory board for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and other government recipients for the express purpose of addressing bad loan practices—and Democrats blocked it.”
- The Palin “gaffe”: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac bailouts “expensive”
- “First, they operate as private companies, but they’re not. Both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have government backing for their operations—which puts taxpayers in the position of co-signer. John McCain made this point two months ago when responding to the initial crisis that threatened to bankrupt the two lending giants, and said the time has come to eliminate both and allow the private sector to do their work, instead of these two quasi-governmental agencies”
- McCain’s attempt to fix Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac in 2005
- “In this [2006] speech, McCain managed to predict the entire collapse that has forced the government to eat Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with Bear Stearns and AIG.”
- Obama Needs a Sister Soulja Moment
- “Congressional Democrats were and remain the leading defenders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, promising to resist efforts to shrink the companies, now under government control, and sell off their assets. Democrats had plenty of help from Republicans, to be sure, but it was mainly conservatives who have been warning for more than a decade that their public risk/private profit model was a disaster waiting to happen.”
- Palin Makes Her First Gaffe
- It seems to me that the “gaffe” was made by bloggers who somehow thought that hundreds of billions of dollars of bailout money isn’t expensive.
- Mary Sanchez: Palin gloriously, fabulously unfit for duty
- Taxpayers on the hook for a couple hundred billion “might” count as taxpayers taking a hit for these companies; and it’s all the fault of the GOP for, apparently, not fighting the Democratic party hard enough.
- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: too big and too expensive
- “Not surprisingly, Palin was roundly attacked by people either too partisan to be honest about things or too ignorant that Congress had already written a blank check to Fannie and Freddie that was getting more expensive to taxpayers by the day.”
More presidential elections
- If I were running for president…
- I’d make heavy use of short videos, and I’d record everything I did with the media.
- Fighting for the American Dream
- Joe the Plumber writes about his experiences at the center of one of the most vicious smear campaigns in recent memory.
- McCain sees the light: campaign finance reform dead
- Now, will he introduce bills to repeal those laws?
- Vote on performance, not promises
- If you’re disappointed that President Obama is the same wheeler-dealer he was when he was a Senator, take it as a lesson for future elections: vote performance and record, not promises.
- A proven reformer
- If one thing exemplifies the difference between the two main campaigns, it’s their encouragement of anonymous donors.
- 20 more pages with the topic presidential elections, and other related pages
More Crisifying
- Can the president take responsibility for market rises?
- If the president gets blamed when the market falls, can he take credit when it rises?
- Crisis quote of the day
- Congress: if you aren’t willing to go broke, we’ll go broke for you.
- What does 1.2 trillion dollars buy?
- What can you get for 1.2 trillion nowadays? How about two and a half years of no employer-side payroll taxes?
- My Pet Crisis
- Someone needs to send President Obama a copy of The Pet Goat. Panic is not the right response to a financial crisis.
- Upturns with no downturns
- A pessimistic clock might be right twice a day; it might not be. It’s hard to tell when the clock doesn’t even use the same numbers we’re used to.
More Sarah Palin
- Who is the fiscally-sane candidate?
- Which of the Republican candidates is most likely to help turn this country back on the path of fiscal sanity?
- Going Rogue: An American Life
- Unlike politicians who have to fall back on their ancestors for middle-class anecdotes, Palin lived them. In the seventies, her father took them from rural Idaho to greater opportunities in Alaska, but it wasn’t her father who built their family business: it was Todd and Sarah.
- Governor Perry and the role of government
- The Perry Gardasil flap is a very good example of the discussion needed for the role of government; the people trying to divert attention away from Perry’s decision and instead fight an army of strawmen are doing Republicans and independents a disservice.
- The endless campaign
- Should we have endless political campaigns? That’s the Barack Obama plan, but is it right for American politics?
- Sarah Palin’s Gordian Knot: Slicing crony capitalism
- “Real hope isn’t in an individual. It’s not in a politician, certainly… don’t wait for the permanent political class to reform anything for you. They won’t. They can’t. They can’t even take responsibility for their own actions.”
- 15 more pages with the topic Sarah Palin, and other related pages
More financial reform
- Definitionally dodging recession responsibility
- You’re in a recession when the economy’s doing well; you’re out of it when the economy sucks. Ignore that mortgage crisis behind the curtain.
- Upturns with no downturns
- A pessimistic clock might be right twice a day; it might not be. It’s hard to tell when the clock doesn’t even use the same numbers we’re used to.
- Moving on to John McCain
- The more I learn about John McCain the more I want to vote for him.
Updated to include the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005.