Government-sponsored mortgage giant Freddie Mac is demanding another $10.6 billion in bailouts, which the Obama administration is expected to give it. Obama’s so-called financial “reform” proposal does absolutely nothing to reform Freddie Mac, admits Obama’s Treasury secretary, tax cheat Timothy Geithner, even though he admits that Freddie Mac was “a core part of what went wrong in our system.” (At the direction of the Obama administration, Freddie Mac is now running up $30 billion in losses to bail out mortgage borrowers, some of whom have high incomes. Federal regulators sought to make Freddie Mac hide the resulting losses from the SEC and the public.) By contrast, the Republican alternative “aims to wind down, and break up” Freddie Mac and “limit taxpayer exposure” to its losses.
“American taxpayers are paying for $6.8 billion of the Greek bailout” through contributions to an international bailout fund backed by the Obama administration. Greece is being bailed out by Europe and the international community because it is running up huge budget deficits due to a bloated bureaucracy and government pensions that let many Greeks retire in their 50s. “The Obama administration wants to use U.S. tax dollars to bail out a nation that is in a financial death spiral brought on by years of amazingly irresponsible deficit spending and similar behaviors often found in socialist states.”
Rioters in Greece killed three bank employees yesterday in their rage over possible budget cuts. “The protesting civil servant workers trapped the bank employees in a burning building.”
Government spending is out of control in America, too. Earlier, the Obama administration lifted the $400 billion limit on bailouts for the government-sponsored mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, so that they could continue to buy up junky mortgages at taxpayer expense, and showered their executives with $42 million in compensation. The Obama Administration is now expanding the bailouts of these mortgage giants so that they can lavish pay on their CEOs and reduce the payments of deadbeat mortgage borrowers.
Fannie and Freddie helped spawn the mortgage crisis by acting as loan toilets, buying up risky mortgages and thus creating an artificial market for junk. “From the time Fannie and Freddie began buying risky loans as early as 1993, they routinely misrepresented the mortgages they were acquiring, reporting them as prime when they had characteristics that made them clearly subprime.” They paid their CEOs millions, and engaged in massive accounting fraud — $6.3 billion at Fannie Mae alone — to increase the size of their managers’ bonuses. As Government-Sponsored Enterprises, they were exempt from the capital requirements that apply to private banks, so they did not have enough reserves to cover their losses when their mortgages started defaulting.
Banking expert Peter J. Wallison, who prophetically warned against the risky practices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for years, says that Obama’s proposals will lead to “bailouts forever” and give big, politically-connected banks that are “too big to fail” the ability to drive smaller rivals out of business at the expense of consumers and taxpayers.
Obama claims that it will not lead to more bailouts, but even congressional Democrats admit that it will. As Congressman Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) admitted, the “bill has unlimited executive bailout authority. . .The bill contains permanent, unlimited bailout authority.”
Government pressure on banks to make loans in economically-depressed neighborhoods was another key reason for the mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis. If Obama has his way, that pressure will increase. The House earlier approved Obama’s proposal to create a politically-correct entity called the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. “The agency would be in charge of enforcing the Community Reinvestment Act, a law that prods banks to make loans in low-income communities.” It would do so without regard for banks’ financial safety and soundness, even though the Community Reinvestment Act was a key contributor to the financial crisis.
Comments
The sad thing is that Obongo is following the Greek model. Wonder how it's going to turn out?
It will turn out great turd becuse Obama is a great leeder.
ROFL. Did you really call me a turd Joann? How juvenile of you! Maybe I can return the favor the next time you put out one of your lame 'articles'. I use the term article liberally.
That's not even high school level humor.
I noticed that last night. Greece needs a little more than FM!!!
Troubling to say the least.
Is Barney Frank still butt buddies with the honcho at Fannie
Mae?
Obama's next campaign cry will be
TEN WE KENYA!!!
Sorry
YES WE KENYA!!
Not talked about is WHY the failure of Greece and Portugal and Spain to follow. What do they all have in common?
They are all Socialist countries and Socialism is failing.
YET, Our Socialist/Fascist?Marxist in the WH is forcing us down the same path with his jackboot on our necks.
JoAnn writes:
"It will turn out great turd becuse Obama is a great leeder."
Typical Obot, with the mentality and spelling skills of a 3rd grader.
Thank you for writing on this, Hans.
“Fleece” is exactly the term used by Harvard’s Elizabeth Warren (Chair for oversight of the so-called “bailout”) to socialize banksters’ gambling losses in Orwellian opposition of the law to put them under bankruptcy procedures and criminal investigation. Regulators have been captured and banksters create credit out of nothing far beyond legal limits to gamble. The core of the problem is allowing banks to create credit out of nothing. This allows the pinnacle bank, the Fed, to do so whenever they want and off-book for insiders.
The answer is national monetary reform for government to create money directly to pay for public goods and services rather than banks creating credit as debt that can never be repaid in the national economy. I give my best shot to cite economics experts who accurately explain our “emperor has no clothes” rigged-casino economy, and open the door to the solutions in my article Open letter to higher education part 3 of 4.
Mitch and others here seem to have an obsessive compulsive disorder regarding Ms. Blake. There are some good medications available to treat it. You may want to contact your personal physician.
Now Dr. Steven Winn weighs in with the 'anyone who points out the obvious needs to be on meds' argument. I'm sure glad you're not my 'personal physician'.
Carl,
You are of correct that the education system has failed to truly educate their students on the 'ponzi scheme' that is fractional reserve banking. Since you are an educator you know that the majority of teachers are liberal idea logs who will follow the Goldmann Sach's backed Obama no matter where he he leads them. They're good little Obots who take their mind control meds.
Hans, You sure have some foul-mouthed readers. This gives a bad indication on what kind of people follow the conservative creed. It would be preferable to have some intelligent, constructive comments I would think. This is just a side show for crazies.
The responses are embarassing. Hans, are you doing this stuff on company time?
"Mr. Malaci" and "Newton" are almost certainly the same person -- a left-wing troll.
Because they're among the only ones here who can write a sentence that's not laced in obscenities and loaded with poor grammar/spelling?
Examiner.com is being turned into a cesspool by a group of hit-and-run conservative nutballs. You may need to sanitize your comments.
In Greece, it is common for members of many professions to retire at age 50 -- including hairdressers!
See New York Times, March 11, "Patchwork Pension Plan Adds to Greek Debt Woes."
No wonder they are going broke and are demanding a bailout!
So this article actually understates the case in saying that Greeks often retire in their 50s or early 60s.
Also, did you see an article about Greeks not paying their taxes. An example: 500 some people admitted to having swimming pools on their tax returns. From an arial view, it was found there were about 7,000 pools.
Checked that article again for the numbers. It was tax returns in Athens. About 350 admitted to swimming pools; arial view found more than 16,000 pools!
I live in Greece, I immigrated here and hold a double citizenship. You have have misrepresented what is happening in Greece.
Also how can other countries be the same model as Greece? Greece was under the thumb of Kissinger's mililary thugs until the 70's. Greece suffered massacres under the Nazis in WWII yet had belated help from the allies, so they had to win the battle for their country alone which helped the overall success of WWII by the allies. Did Greece get any monetary relief to help rebuild after WWII, no. But Germany did from the allies, on top of what the Germans had stolen from Greece during the war.
There is similarity with some countries in that Greece was offered a Wall Street loan, which it accepted in the early 2000's. Then Wall Street speculated against Greece being able to pay the loan, even as recently as 2010.
Everyone has been taking austerity measures. My familes' income is much less this year due to cutbacks. And what will we be paying? In the end for some Wall Street CEO's bonus probably.
The EU is exploring ways to make speculation easier to identify and prosecute against.
I should add that the racism against Greeks is quite overwhelming and acceptable by the citizens in countries who have done the most to fleece Greece even now. Germany (with Siemens corruption) England (Parthenon Marbles and extraordinary efforts to make Greece look bad while English tourists practice oral sex in the streets, don't pay their hotel bills, and throw their trash on the street as if they were still in London). And the USA, well, look at yourselves, you know what I'm talking about. Racism is a way of life in the "one remaining SuperPower." If you don't ridicule and try to castrate some group you perceive as "different" you will be ostracized and perhaps even worse.
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