Pull your pants down and grease up..F&F cost to taxpayer.

[loosecannon]

$363 billion, huh?
Let me help put that into perspective. This number is twice what we have already spent to bail them out.
Wow.
Massive gov't spending will continue.
Please resume your normal activities.
That is all.

In other words....fuck the voters.

yeah!

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.~ H. L. Mencken

 

[Care4all]

what the heck???

is fannie and freddie STILL buying up the TOXIC mortgaged backed securities that the other banks created????

 

[uscitizen]

Read and weep.
This is based on worst case, so I figure add another 20% and that will be the real case.

Fannie, Freddie May Draw $363 Billion, FHFA Says - Bloomberg

Much profit was made off of Fannie and Freddie.
Anyone know how much?

 

[uscitizen]

what the heck???

is fannie and freddie STILL buying up the TOXIC mortgaged backed securities that the other banks created????

Probably, we have not really done anything different yet. So why expect anything different to happen?

I would venture to say that lots of money is still being made off of Freddie and Fannie.

 

[loosecannon]

what the heck???

is fannie and freddie STILL buying up the TOXIC mortgaged backed securities that the other banks created????

DING
DING
DING

We have a winner! please exchange your tokens at the door.

THIS is corporate welfare on steroids!

 

[American Horse]

Fannie and Freddie caused the bubble.

F & F, Goldman Sachs, Chase, Wells Fargo, Bear Stearns, Lehmann Bros Merrill Lynch all got caught in the down draft.

Some private Co's got bail outs and paid it back, others got liquidated, but the companies that caused it are still sucking capital.

Does any of this make sense?

If you are a liberal, not only does it make sense - but it is still the right way to do things

Well it was on the repub watch where this all went out of control. The big explosion is subprime debt was in 2004-2006, and it was the repubs who had control of the house, senate and white house, and stood around contemplating their navels while the nation was going in the crapper. The repubs should have controlled F&F, but they failed to do so. The dems were not helpful, but the repubs had the controls.

The "Repubs" did not have a fillibuster proof senate and couldn't do anything beyond raise alarms and they and the president (Bush) did that many many times. But of course one has to assume you aren't aware of how house committees and the senate operate .

 

[mudwhistle]

what the heck???

is fannie and freddie STILL buying up the TOXIC mortgaged backed securities that the other banks created????

The fed is doing that right now. Fannie and Freddie are just going broke from their round of bailouts.

By the way...friends of Obama are running Fannie and Freddie now.

 

[loosecannon]

what the heck???

is fannie and freddie STILL buying up the TOXIC mortgaged backed securities that the other banks created????

The fed is doing that right now. Fannie and Freddie are just going broke from their round of bailouts.

By the way...friends of Obama are running Fannie and Freddie now.

eggsactly. Privatize the profits, publicize the loses. Our entire recovery plan begins and ends with subsidizing banks that won't lend anywho.

 

[finebead]

If you are a liberal, not only does it make sense - but it is still the right way to do things

Well it was on the repub watch where this all went out of control. The big explosion is subprime debt was in 2004-2006, and it was the repubs who had control of the house, senate and white house, and stood around contemplating their navels while the nation was going in the crapper. The repubs should have controlled F&F, but they failed to do so. The dems were not helpful, but the repubs had the controls.

The "Repubs" did not have a fillibuster proof senate and couldn't do anything beyond raise alarms and they and the president (Bush) did that many many times. But of course one has to assume you aren't aware of how house committees and the senate operate .

I know how the house and senate rules operate, but the fact is that the house in 2005 passed a fannie and freddie reform bill with a majority of both dems and reps supporting it. That was HR 1461.

H.R. 1461:

Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005
109th Congress

See H.R. 1461 [109th] on THOMAS for the official source of information on this bill or resolution.

Date Where Description - Result
Oct 26, 2005 5:36 PM House
On Passage - House - H.R. 1461 Federal Housing Finance Reform Act
Passed 331-90, 12 not voting

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-1461&tab=votes

So, all that hoohaa about big bad barney frank blocking legislation is just BS. If you know the house rules, the committees were chaired by repubs, had repub majorities, so whatever was passed out was a repub bill, and it passed the whole house 331-90, with a majority of both reps and dems supporting the bill.

barney frank was NOT the problem with not getting this done, nor were the dems.

The companion bill in the senate was s190 which was never passed due to lack of REPUBLICAN support for the bill. The repub majority was 59 votes in the senate, you mean to tell me if the majority of dems supported the bill in the house, the repubs couldn't have possibly bought one dem senator??? Bull.

That's correct, isn't it. Do you have any supported facts?

 

[finebead]

"not helpful"..yes that not a mouthful.....fail.

The repubs held a majority in the house and in the senate from 1994 to 2006, and from 2001 to 2008 they held the white house also. That's a fact.

The subprime lending exploded upward in 2004 to 2006, on the repub watch. Fact.

While subprime lending was exploding upward from 2004 to 2006, which was while the repubs held the majority in the house, senate, and held the white house, no bill was passed to control or limit Fannie and Freddie, although there much discussion that this was needed. That's a fact.

The republicans failed and they allowed a housing bubble to be created, which burst and caused a banking crisis after the repubs failed to regulate the banks, especially the biggest banks. That's a fact.

Rather than just telling me I failed, do you have any facts that are supported by creditable sources?

You're just another one with zero critical thinking skills, becasue you let others do it for you and swallow it.


you don't get to create the boundaries of the time-line so its convenient for you either...unless of course this is what you have been told and then, so shall you believe......

so a rep congress with a rep. president leaves the reps on the hook, a rep congress with a dem president its reps fault again, a rep president with a dem congress? whats that? and a dem congress with a dem president?

yea, I thought so.

That is a lot of personal biased opinion with no facts to back it up. If you think I am being unfair in selecting timeframes, show me where.

Pick your timeframes, state your assertions, provide facts to back it up.

Random spewing of irrelevant unsubstantiated discourse will not win a debate.

See my post in this thread, #29, and you will see the House passed a F&F reform bill, written by the repubs, with majority support from both repubs and dems.

It never passed the senate, and it had nothing to do with the repubs not having a filibuster proof majority in the senate. Do you know why the senate never passed an F&F reform bill in 2005, the last opportunity to possibly do the country any good? It was the republicans who failed, pure and simple, it was the senate republicans who failed.

 

[American Horse]

The repubs held a majority in the house and in the senate from 1994 to 2006, and from 2001 to 2008 they held the white house also. That's a fact.

The subprime lending exploded upward in 2004 to 2006, on the repub watch. Fact.

While subprime lending was exploding upward from 2004 to 2006, which was while the repubs held the majority in the house, senate, and held the white house, no bill was passed to control or limit Fannie and Freddie, although there much discussion that this was needed. That's a fact.

The republicans failed and they allowed a housing bubble to be created, which burst and caused a banking crisis after the repubs failed to regulate the banks, especially the biggest banks. That's a fact.

Rather than just telling me I failed, do you have any facts that are supported by creditable sources?

You're just another one with zero critical thinking skills, becasue you let others do it for you and swallow it.


you don't get to create the boundaries of the time-line so its convenient for you either...unless of course this is what you have been told and then, so shall you believe......

so a rep congress with a rep. president leaves the reps on the hook, a rep congress with a dem president its reps fault again, a rep president with a dem congress? whats that? and a dem congress with a dem president?

yea, I thought so.

That is a lot of personal biased opinion with no facts to back it up. If you think I am being unfair in selecting timeframes, show me where.

Pick your timeframes, state your assertions, provide facts to back it up.

Random spewing of irrelevant unsubstantiated discourse will not win a debate.

See my post in this thread, #29, and you will see the House passed a F&F reform bill, written by the repubs, with majority support from both repubs and dems.

It never passed the senate, and it had nothing to do with the repubs not having a filibuster proof majority in the senate. Do you know why the senate never passed an F&F reform bill in 2005, the last opportunity to possibly do the country any good? It was the republicans who failed, pure and simple, it was the senate republicans who failed.

You are making the claim that since the Senate Republicans could not (or did not) pass HR 1461 (Federal Housing Finance Reform act of 2005) that they did not want to pass any legislation to protect the public and the economy from the actions of F&F.

The Senate backed off of their draft bill (S-190) since the handwriting was on the wall with HR-1461. The president had asked for a regulator for F&F. That was what he asked to be congress’s primary focus in any legislation. The "regulator" created by HR 1461 was to be less empowered than OFHEO to rein in F&F and no where near to the level currently exercised by federal bank regulators, which was what Bush asked for repeatedly.

Many times a bill in either house is so flawed as to not make matters better but in the end, worse. If a bill is passed and there is the illusion that something has been accomplished, then the legislators and the American public may act on that assumption and do no more, creating a false sense of security.

HR 1461 was such a bill. It would not have prevented the Financial crisis that resulted in 2008. That is a big part of the reason it was not passed with the Republican Majority

Chairman Oxley, a Republican should be held to blame. Here’s what was said in the WSJ on May 9, 2005 titled "Fannie's Friends on the Hill" about HR-1461, and Chairman Oxley:

" - Enter Mr. Oxley, who wants to toss the MBS (Mortgage Backed Securities) question to the new regulator that Congress is creating to monitor Fan and Fred. That regulator in turn would be able to pare back the MBS portfolios only if they posed a threat to safety and soundness. By the time any regulator came to that conclusion, of course, a crisis would be well under way -- or such a judgment might trigger one. This means there are effectively no MBS portfolio limits in the Oxley bill.

The Congressman also punts on the power of the regulator to approve new businesses for Fan and Fred. He [Oxley] borrows language from current law that our sources say would make it difficult for any regulator to challenge the companies' desires -- especially given their political clout.

And by delaying this provision until a year after any bill passes, (my emphasis) he grandfathers anything the companies now plan to do. … Fannie's friends on the Hill want a Potemkin reform that solves their political problem while letting them return to subsidy-as-usual. - ”

The House bill was simply too disastrous for the Senate to come to grips with. They dealt with some of the same questions over there, and although it came out of committee, it never passed, and it’s a good thing that it failed.

It would not have prevented the financial disaster, and would’ve given F&F a foot up. At least the ensuing events have clarified the problem, and once the fallout from the elections next month has settled congress can do what needs to be done.

But you were wrong about the Republicans being able to find a vote to break a filibuster. There were people on both sides of the aisle who would’ve prevented that from happening, and the Senate Bill (and therefore also house bill) was allowed to die.

In THIS LINK; AN ANALYSIS of HR 1461; This is an important read for anyone interested in the disaster that was the house bill; should read it and be educated in how a bill or legislation can go wrong even when the solution of the problem is well known, and much talked about leading up to the drafting of legislation. It seems that when the title of the bill includes the word "REFORM" watch out.

And especially watch out when the Chairman is a man like Michael Oxley, the same man who put his name on Sarbanes-Oxley, the bill that has enabled China to take the 2009 IPO Crown from the USA.

 

[Big Black Dog]

I don't want to pull my pants down today. It's a little bit chilly here today. Can I do it on the next warm day?

 

[finebead]

You're just another one with zero critical thinking skills, becasue you let others do it for you and swallow it.

you don't get to create the boundaries of the time-line so its convenient for you either...unless of course this is what you have been told and then, so shall you believe......

so a rep congress with a rep. president leaves the reps on the hook, a rep congress with a dem president its reps fault again, a rep president with a dem congress? whats that? and a dem congress with a dem president?

yea, I thought so.

That is a lot of personal biased opinion with no facts to back it up. If you think I am being unfair in selecting timeframes, show me where.

Pick your timeframes, state your assertions, provide facts to back it up.

Random spewing of irrelevant unsubstantiated discourse will not win a debate.

See my post in this thread, #29, and you will see the House passed a F&F reform bill, written by the repubs, with majority support from both repubs and dems.

It never passed the senate, and it had nothing to do with the repubs not having a filibuster proof majority in the senate. Do you know why the senate never passed an F&F reform bill in 2005, the last opportunity to possibly do the country any good? It was the republicans who failed, pure and simple, it was the senate republicans who failed.

You are making the claim that since the Senate Republicans could not (or did not) pass HR 1461 (Federal Housing Finance Reform act of 2005) that they did not want to pass any legislation to protect the public and the economy from the actions of F&F.

The Senate backed off of their draft bill (S-190) since the handwriting was on the wall with HR-1461. The president had asked for a regulator for F&F. That was what he asked to be congress’s primary focus in any legislation. The "regulator" created by HR 1461 was to be less empowered than OFHEO to rein in F&F and no where near to the level currently exercised by federal bank regulators, which was what Bush asked for repeatedly.

Many times a bill in either house is so flawed as to not make matters better but in the end, worse. If a bill is passed and there is the illusion that something has been accomplished, then the legislators and the American public may act on that assumption and do no more, creating a false sense of security.

HR 1461 was such a bill. It would not have prevented the Financial crisis that resulted in 2008. That is a big part of the reason it was not passed with the Republican Majority

Chairman Oxley, a Republican should be held to blame. Here’s what was said in the WSJ on May 9, 2005 titled "Fannie's Friends on the Hill" about HR-1461, and Chairman Oxley:

" - Enter Mr. Oxley, who wants to toss the MBS (Mortgage Backed Securities) question to the new regulator that Congress is creating to monitor Fan and Fred. That regulator in turn would be able to pare back the MBS portfolios only if they posed a threat to safety and soundness. By the time any regulator came to that conclusion, of course, a crisis would be well under way -- or such a judgment might trigger one. This means there are effectively no MBS portfolio limits in the Oxley bill.

The Congressman also punts on the power of the regulator to approve new businesses for Fan and Fred. He [Oxley] borrows language from current law that our sources say would make it difficult for any regulator to challenge the companies' desires -- especially given their political clout.

And by delaying this provision until a year after any bill passes, (my emphasis) he grandfathers anything the companies now plan to do. … Fannie's friends on the Hill want a Potemkin reform that solves their political problem while letting them return to subsidy-as-usual. - ”

The House bill was simply too disastrous for the Senate to come to grips with. They dealt with some of the same questions over there, and although it came out of committee, it never passed, and it’s a good thing that it failed.

It would not have prevented the financial disaster, and would’ve given F&F a foot up. At least the ensuing events have clarified the problem, and once the fallout from the elections next month has settled congress can do what needs to be done.

But you were wrong about the Republicans being able to find a vote to break a filibuster. There were people on both sides of the aisle who would’ve prevented that from happening, and the Senate Bill (and therefore also house bill) was allowed to die.

In THIS LINK; AN ANALYSIS of HR 1461; This is an important read for anyone interested in the disaster that was the house bill; should read it and be educated in how a bill or legislation can go wrong even when the solution of the problem is well known, and much talked about leading up to the drafting of legislation. It seems that when the title of the bill includes the word "REFORM" watch out.

You could not have picked a more biased source of analysis of HR 1461 than the American Enterprise Institute, a republican think tank, trying to provide cover to the administration, who did NOT want to control F&F, or else the economy would have slowed down and made them look bad. Let's keep the make work "stimulus program" going, and hope it hobbles to the next administration and everyone will blame them. Think they are not biased, consider this:

Three days after calling health-care reform a debacle for Republicans, David Frum was forced out of his job at the American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday.

The ouster also came one day after a harsh Wall Street Journal editorial ripped the former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, saying he "now makes his living as the media's go-to basher of fellow Republicans" and accusing him of "peddling bad revisionist history."

Frum made clear, in a letter to AEI President Arthur C. Brooks, that his departure after seven years as a resident fellow at the conservative think tank was not voluntary.

LINK
Yea, AEI is unbiased, you criticize the repubs and you get FIRED; they're real independent... NOT!!!

And of course this assertion from you is TOTAL WRONG:

The Senate backed off of their draft bill (S-190) since the handwriting was on the wall with HR-1461. The president had asked for a regulator for F&F. That was what he asked to be congress’s primary focus in any legislation. The "regulator" created by HR 1461 was to be less empowered than OFHEO to rein in F&F and no where near to the level currently exercised by federal bank regulators, which was what Bush asked for repeatedly.

This is what really happened, although the truth remained secret and hidden for 3 years until 2008:

Freddie Mac arranged stealth lobbying in 2005

Associated Press ,Oct. 19, 2008

WASHINGTON — Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation that would have regulated and trimmed the mortgage finance giant and its sister company, Fannie Mae, three years before the government took control to prevent their collapse.

In the cross hairs of the campaign carried out by DCI of Washington were Republican senators and a regulatory overhaul bill sponsored by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. DCI's chief executive is Doug Goodyear, whom John McCain's campaign later hired to manage the GOP convention in September.

Freddie Mac's payments to DCI began shortly after the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee sent Hagel's bill to the then GOP-run Senate on July 28, 2005. All GOP members of the committee supported it; all Democrats opposed it.

In the midst of DCI's yearlong effort, Hagel and 25 other Republican senators pleaded unsuccessfully with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to allow a vote.

"If effective regulatory reform legislation ... is not enacted this year, 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," the senators wrote in a letter that proved prescient.

Unknown to the senators, DCI was undermining support for the bill in a campaign targeting 17 Republican senators in 13 states, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. The states and the senators targeted changed over time, but always stayed on the Republican side.

In the end, there was not enough Republican support for Hagel's bill to warrant bringing it up for a vote because Democrats also opposed it and the votes of some would be needed for passage. The measure died at the end of the 109th Congress.

The Republican senators targeted by DCI began hearing from prominent constituents and financial contributors, all urging the defeat of Hagel's bill because it might harm the housing boom. The effort generated newspaper articles and radio and TV appearances by participants who spoke out against the measure.

Inside Freddie Mac headquarters in 2005, the few dozen people who knew what DCI was doing referred to the initiative as "the stealth lobbying campaign," according to three people familiar with the drive.
They spoke only on condition of anonymity, saying they fear retaliation if their names were disclosed.

Freddie Mac executive Hollis McLoughlin oversaw DCI's drive, according to the three people.

"Hollis's goal was not to have any Freddie Mac fingerprints on this project and DCI became the hidden hand behind the effort," one of the three people told the AP.

Before 2004, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were Democratic strongholds. After 2004, Republicans ran their political operations. McLoughlin, who joined Freddie Mac in 2004 as chief of staff, has given $32,250 to Republican candidates over the years, including $2,800 to McCain, and has given none to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.
On Friday night, Hagel's chief of staff, Mike Buttry, said Hagel's legislation "was the last best chance to bring greater oversight and tighter regulation to Freddie and Fannie, and they used every means they could to defeat Sen. Hagel's legislation every step of the way."

"It is outrageous that a congressionally chartered government-sponsored enterprise would lobby against a member of Congress's bill that would strengthen the regulation and oversight of that institution," Buttry said in a statement. "America has paid an extremely high price for the reckless, and possibly criminal, actions of the leadership at Freddie and Fannie."
Nine of the 17 targeted Republican senators did not sign Hagel's letter: Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Christopher "Kit" Bond and Jim Talent of Missouri, Conrad Burns of Montana, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Olympia Snowe of Maine, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and George Allen of Virginia. Aside from the nine, 20 other Republican senators did not sign Hagel's letter.

Freddie Mac arranged stealth lobbying in 2005 | Business | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
(by the way, the Houston Chronicle is not exactly a "liberal paper", down here in Houston, but you can also find this same report at Fox News, so the report is accurate).

Bill Frist (R-Tenn) did not bring the bill up for a vote because there was not adequate repub support to regulate Fannie, and since they were in the majority in the senate, that ended the effort. It turns out you don't have to buy the whole senate, you just have to get enough votes on the margin to deny the majority their majority, and DCI did that. But you will notice this did not come to light until 2008. For the republicans, you can be for regulation and against regulation at the same time.

Heck, by my count, that's 25 repubs in the senate in favor of reform, and 29 against, out of a total of 54 repub senators. The repubs couldn't even get a majority in their own caucus. This was not on Barney Frank, this could never have passed the senate because the republicans would have killed it if it came to a vote. Frist was just too smart to show the public the real story. Then you can talk about reform and blame its failure on someone else, since the hypocrits weren't on the record.

What a den of two faced hypocrites, being bought out by the housing industry, not voting for F&F reform, and saying you ARE for reform and trying to CYA by blaming Barney Frank!

 

[finebead]

Chirp, Chirp...

 

[American Horse]

In THIS LINK; AN ANALYSIS of HR 1461; This is an important read for anyone interested in the disaster that was the house bill:
A FEW ITEMS FROM THE ABOVE LINK AT AEI:

The bill ... [was] far from a tough bill. Indeed, HR 1641 [was] so fundamentally flawed as a “reform” measure that it would leave the two GSEs much better off than ... under current law.

The analysis was written prior to the failure of the US Senate to pass a companion bill:


To take the most egregious example, the bill limits OFHEO’s activities immediately after enactment to winding up its operations, but does not authorize the new regulator to begin operations for a year. In the meantime, the GSEs (including the Federal Home Loan Banks) are free from safety-and-soundness oversight, and their expansion into new lines of business would not be controlled. Then, when the new regulator begins operations, it is prohibited from reviewing the activities in which Fannie and Freddie are already engaged. The result is a hiatus in which Fannie and Freddie have a free pass to enter any field that might arguably be related to their mission, with little authority in the new regulator to question its legitimacy under the law. This provision alone should be of concern to the many housing-related industries that might find themselves competing with Fannie and Freddie one year after the enactment of a law that contains the elements of this bill.


The Senate appropriations committee recently attempted to deny OFHEO the funds needed to complete the Special Examination Report of Fannie Mae. That report revealed internal control failures so substantial that they caused the ouster of Fannie Mae’s CEO, CFO, and other senior officers. Thus, it would be a welcome improvement to remove OFHEO from pressure Congress can exert on the regulator through the appropriations process. In addition, H.R. 1461 does make some improvements in the weak regulatory framework available to OFHEO today, but these improvements in regulatory authority over the GSEs do not bring the regulation of the GSEs up to the standard of federal bank regulation.


Fannie and Freddie have far more political clout than individual banks, or even the entire banking industry, and that must be taken into account when considering whether the new regulator will be able to exercise its new powers effectively or resist pressure from the GSEs to expand their range of activities.

Opportunities for the GSEs: The one-year gap means that, for a full year, the GSEs will operate without examination, regulation of safety and soundness, regulation of their new activities, or regulation of their affordable housing activities. For the GSEs, this is a great benefit. They will be able to expand into new activities which, thanks to another part of the bill, would be grandfathered and immune from review when the new regulator finally comes into being. For example, it is conceivable that they could enter many new areas of activity during this period without any regulator having authority to stop them.


Opportunities for the GSEs: It is certain that if the regulator attempts to put a definition in place that in any way restricts Fannie and Freddie, they will go either to the courts or Congress and challenge the regulator’s action. What clearly happened here is that the committee ducked its responsibility to give the regulator any help in dealing with these powerful companies, and left the task of restricting their expansion outside the secondary mortgage market wholly unfinished. As a result, because of the political power of the enterprises, no industry associated with housing can be assured that it will not have to compete one day with Fannie or Freddie, or both.


While H.R. 1461 does make some improvements in the regulator’s enforcement authority, the authority of the regulator remains inferior to that of the federal bank regulators. Given the demonstrated failure of internal controls at Fannie and Freddie, the huge potential risks they create for the taxpayers and the economy generally, and their enormous and carefully cultivated political power, the supervisory structure for the GSEs should be stronger--not weaker--than that in place for banks. That, however, is not the pattern in HR 1461.


Accordingly, the bill does not substantially improve on the authorities now available to OFHEO if an enterprise suffers sudden and severe losses, and does not take account of the fact that a failing enterprise may have significant systemic effects that require emergency action.
Even if the predicate exists for the appointment of a receiver under these circumstances, the regulator is not required to do so--providing an opportunity for Fannie or Freddie to put political pressure on the regulator that will result in costly forbearance.


Opportunities for Fannie and Freddie: The problem with loose and missing supervisory language is that it invites a GSE to litigate rather than comply with a regulator’s requests and orders. Litigation at a time of financial crisis is potentially damaging to taxpayers because of the likelihood that a failing GSE would dissipate its assets and, like the S&Ls in the midst of their crisis in the late 1980s, compound its losses. Litigation would mean that the bank regulatory term “prompt corrective action” loses its promptness when applied to the GSEs.


Current law: Currently the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the safety-and-soundness regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the GSE oversight functions of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), both are funded through the appropriations process. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have repeatedly used their influence over the appropriations process to deny adequate funding for important OFHEO activities, most recently the OFHEO Special Examination of Fannie Mae.


H.R. 1461 also lacks other important safeguards. Laws are needed to (i) prohibit GSE retaliation against those organizations or individuals that oppose the GSEs through lawful means and (ii) require transparency of the GSEs’ massive political expenditures to influence the Congress and other policymakers. These protective measures can help to limit unfair practices and reveal more clearly in public some of the immense political power that the GSEs wield.

 

[finebead]

In THIS LINK; AN ANALYSIS of HR 1461; This is an important read for anyone interested in the disaster that was the house bill:
A FEW ITEMS FROM THE ABOVE LINK AT AEI:

The bill ... [was] far from a tough bill. Indeed, HR 1641 [was] so fundamentally flawed as a “reform” measure that it would leave the two GSEs much better off than ... under current law.

The analysis was written prior to the failure of the US Senate to pass a companion bill:


To take the most egregious example, the bill limits OFHEO’s activities immediately after enactment to winding up its operations, but does not authorize the new regulator to begin operations for a year. In the meantime, the GSEs (including the Federal Home Loan Banks) are free from safety-and-soundness oversight, and their expansion into new lines of business would not be controlled. Then, when the new regulator begins operations, it is prohibited from reviewing the activities in which Fannie and Freddie are already engaged. The result is a hiatus in which Fannie and Freddie have a free pass to enter any field that might arguably be related to their mission, with little authority in the new regulator to question its legitimacy under the law. This provision alone should be of concern to the many housing-related industries that might find themselves competing with Fannie and Freddie one year after the enactment of a law that contains the elements of this bill.

yada, yada, yada

And again you state the same thing as earlier, totally miss the point, and say nothing about Hollis McLaughlin (republican political affairs director at Fannie appointed in 2004) paying Mr. Goodyear, CEO of DCI the republican lobbying company $2 million to lobby 17 republican senators in 2005, 9 of whom would not support s 190 in the senate. There were 20 other repub senators who would not sign Sen. Hagels letter asking Sen. Frist to bring s190 for a vote in the senate, since only 25 signed the letter and 29 did not sign the letter (the letter was like a straw vote, Frist would not endure the embarrassment of bringing s190 for a vote on the full senate only to have it defeated by a majority of his own party, and the bill was not identical to hr 1461 and any differences could have been resolved by a joint committee later, but alas it never happened).

But, you certainly can't blame hr 1461 on the dems, it was a repub majority committee that wrote it, passed in on party lines, and it passed the house with majorities of both parties voting for it. But it was the repub bill, and it does not support the assertion that it was the dems who refused to regulate F&F in 2005. It was the repub failure in the senate, see my post # 33 just above.