Cuomo Resasrtus
1. At the risk of alienating our English Lit aficionados, the prognosis for the most popular pol in NYState may be about to be retailored.
a. Cuomo, who may be the most popular politician in the state, Andrew Cuomo To Run For NY Governor : The Two-Way : NPR
2. Poll: Andrew Cuomo only 6 percentage points ahead of Tea Party rival Carl Paladino in governor race
Read more: Poll: Andrew Cuomo only 6 percentage points ahead of Tea Party rival Carl Paladino in governor race
3. The fall from grace of this scion of a powerful Democrat family can be seen as an allegory for conservative ascendancy in the coming elections .
4.While this may seem a NY story, Cuomo was major player in the Democrat initiated financial meltdown
From the Village Voice analysis of Fannie and Freddie:
Andrew Cuomo and Fannie and Freddie - Page 1 - News - New York - Village Voice
a. There are as many starting points for the mortgage meltdown as there are fears about how far it has yet to go, but one decisive point of departure is the final years of the Clinton administration, when a kid from Queens without any real banking or real-estate experience was the only man in Washington with the power to regulate the giants of home finance, the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), better known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
b. Andrew Cuomo, the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history, made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country's current crisis. He took actions thatin combination with many other factorshelped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the subprime markets without putting in place the means to monitor their increasingly risky investments. He turned the Federal Housing Administration mortgage program into a sweetheart lender with sky-high loan ceilings and no money down, and he legalized what a federal judge has branded "kickbacks" to brokers that have fueled the sale of overpriced and unsupportable loans.
c. Perhaps the only domestic issue George Bush and Bill Clinton were in complete agreement about was maximizing home ownership, each trying to lay claim to a record percentage of homeowners, and both describing their efforts as a boon to blacks and Hispanics. HUD, Fannie, and Freddie were their instruments, and, as is now apparent, the more unsavory the means, the greater the growth .the motive for this bipartisan ownership expansion probably had more to do with the legion of lobbyists working for lenders, brokers, and Wall Street than an effort to walk in MLK's footsteps.
d. [Democratic Housing and Urban Development Secretary] Cuomo, who did more to set these forces of unregulated expansion in motion than any other secretary and then boasted about it, presenting his initiatives as crusades for racial and social justice. Cuomo's predecessor, Henry Cisneros, did that [set new goals for HUD] for the first time in December 1995, taking a cautious approach and moving the GSEs toward a requirement that 42 percent of their mortgages serve low- and moderate-income families. Cuomo raised that number to 50 percent and dramatically hiked GSE mandates to buy mortgages in underserved neighborhoods and for the "very-low-income."
e. [Cuomos HUD] rules explicitly rejected the idea of imposing any new reporting requirements on the GSEs. In other words, HUD wanted Fannie and Freddie to buy risky loans, but the department didn't want to hear just how risky they were .when Cuomo issued his rules barely a week before the 2000 election, he failed to put any data demands in place that would have alerted the next administration, regardless of who it was, to any risks in the new GSE portfolio. In fact, Bush's HUD did institute some reporting requirements in 2004, but then never revealed much of what was learned .Cuomo decided without explanation to adopt rules that prohibited nothing.
f. actions, too, sought to maximize homeownershipthis time by opening the FHA's door to borrowers unable to qualify in the past, a lofty goal that has also helped spur an FHA delinquency rate that exceeds its subprime competitors. The MBA cheered each of these Cuomo decisionsdramatically raising the limits on the size of FHA loans, slicing the down-payment requirement to 3 percent, and cutting the agency's insurance-premium costs virtually in half. Cuomo even supported down-payment and closing-cost assistance programs that allowed FHA borrowers to buy a home without spending a cent of their own money up front.
g. The sad fact is that Cuomo's surrender on YSPs can't be excused as an unfortunate consequence of well-motivated policy, as his defenders have argued regarding his FHA and GSE actions. He has no cover for this one; it exposes him as an agent of special interests. And looking at his GSE and FHA policies through the lens of his retreat on these payoffs (which even Glaser, in a marked change from his MBA days, now condemns) suggests a pattern of compromised judgments.
Andrew Cuomo and Fannie and Freddie - Page 1 - News - New York - Village Voice
1. At the risk of alienating our English Lit aficionados, the prognosis for the most popular pol in NYState may be about to be retailored.
a. Cuomo, who may be the most popular politician in the state, Andrew Cuomo To Run For NY Governor : The Two-Way : NPR
2. Poll: Andrew Cuomo only 6 percentage points ahead of Tea Party rival Carl Paladino in governor race
Read more: Poll: Andrew Cuomo only 6 percentage points ahead of Tea Party rival Carl Paladino in governor race
3. The fall from grace of this scion of a powerful Democrat family can be seen as an allegory for conservative ascendancy in the coming elections .
4.While this may seem a NY story, Cuomo was major player in the Democrat initiated financial meltdown
From the Village Voice analysis of Fannie and Freddie:
Andrew Cuomo and Fannie and Freddie - Page 1 - News - New York - Village Voice
a. There are as many starting points for the mortgage meltdown as there are fears about how far it has yet to go, but one decisive point of departure is the final years of the Clinton administration, when a kid from Queens without any real banking or real-estate experience was the only man in Washington with the power to regulate the giants of home finance, the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), better known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
b. Andrew Cuomo, the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history, made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country's current crisis. He took actions thatin combination with many other factorshelped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the subprime markets without putting in place the means to monitor their increasingly risky investments. He turned the Federal Housing Administration mortgage program into a sweetheart lender with sky-high loan ceilings and no money down, and he legalized what a federal judge has branded "kickbacks" to brokers that have fueled the sale of overpriced and unsupportable loans.
c. Perhaps the only domestic issue George Bush and Bill Clinton were in complete agreement about was maximizing home ownership, each trying to lay claim to a record percentage of homeowners, and both describing their efforts as a boon to blacks and Hispanics. HUD, Fannie, and Freddie were their instruments, and, as is now apparent, the more unsavory the means, the greater the growth .the motive for this bipartisan ownership expansion probably had more to do with the legion of lobbyists working for lenders, brokers, and Wall Street than an effort to walk in MLK's footsteps.
d. [Democratic Housing and Urban Development Secretary] Cuomo, who did more to set these forces of unregulated expansion in motion than any other secretary and then boasted about it, presenting his initiatives as crusades for racial and social justice. Cuomo's predecessor, Henry Cisneros, did that [set new goals for HUD] for the first time in December 1995, taking a cautious approach and moving the GSEs toward a requirement that 42 percent of their mortgages serve low- and moderate-income families. Cuomo raised that number to 50 percent and dramatically hiked GSE mandates to buy mortgages in underserved neighborhoods and for the "very-low-income."
e. [Cuomos HUD] rules explicitly rejected the idea of imposing any new reporting requirements on the GSEs. In other words, HUD wanted Fannie and Freddie to buy risky loans, but the department didn't want to hear just how risky they were .when Cuomo issued his rules barely a week before the 2000 election, he failed to put any data demands in place that would have alerted the next administration, regardless of who it was, to any risks in the new GSE portfolio. In fact, Bush's HUD did institute some reporting requirements in 2004, but then never revealed much of what was learned .Cuomo decided without explanation to adopt rules that prohibited nothing.
f. actions, too, sought to maximize homeownershipthis time by opening the FHA's door to borrowers unable to qualify in the past, a lofty goal that has also helped spur an FHA delinquency rate that exceeds its subprime competitors. The MBA cheered each of these Cuomo decisionsdramatically raising the limits on the size of FHA loans, slicing the down-payment requirement to 3 percent, and cutting the agency's insurance-premium costs virtually in half. Cuomo even supported down-payment and closing-cost assistance programs that allowed FHA borrowers to buy a home without spending a cent of their own money up front.
g. The sad fact is that Cuomo's surrender on YSPs can't be excused as an unfortunate consequence of well-motivated policy, as his defenders have argued regarding his FHA and GSE actions. He has no cover for this one; it exposes him as an agent of special interests. And looking at his GSE and FHA policies through the lens of his retreat on these payoffs (which even Glaser, in a marked change from his MBA days, now condemns) suggests a pattern of compromised judgments.
Andrew Cuomo and Fannie and Freddie - Page 1 - News - New York - Village Voice
