Who's REALLY To Blame For This Crisis

In Sept. of 2003, Bush and the Republican Congress recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade earlier.

Under the plan a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have had the authority to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would have exercised authority over any new lines of business. And it would have determined whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

Barney Frank, who is not the chairman of the banking committee responsible for oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who was the senior Democrat on that committee in 2003, was seriously AGAINST regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Why? Because, according to him, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac "are not facing any kind of financial crisis."

But even he had to have seen the 2002 report on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which led many to demand action be taken.

Frank succeeded in having the proposal made by Bush blocked. Nothing, as we know now, was ever done.

What was really behind Frank's opposition to the proposal? Frank knew that for several years Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had been appropriating about half its loans to low income families. Frank knew that regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would disrupt that.
At the same time Frank was quoted as saying these companies were not in financial trouble, he was quoted as saying, "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."
"Affordable housing" meaning homes for low income families.

A New York Times article from Sept. 1999 states that Fannie Mae had been under increasing pressure from the Clinton administration to expand mortgage loans among low- and moderate-income people and that the corporation loosened its lending requirements to comply.
An ominous paragraph of the article reads, "In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980s."

Frank, in the House and libs in the Senate, were able to defeat Republican overtures towards regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2002 and then again in 2003, in no small part, by making it into a racism issue.

Your opinions about this information will interesting but will not change the facts. I dare you, now, to blame Bush, the Republicans or McCain for this Crisis. This could have been averted with Democratic support of regulatory legislation in 2002 and 2003. They did NOT give the support of the Bush proposal in 2002 nor the McCain legislation in 2003. But rather played the race card and blocked them.

The Full Truth About Our Current Economic Crisis

Barack Obama is digging a hole for himself that will assuredly give the Republicans not only the White House for four more years, but could bring the Republicans back into power in the Senate.

The more he tries to blame George Bush, the Republicans and John McCain as the culprits behind our current credit crisis the more vulnerable he becomes. He is betting the election that the majority of Americans will emotionally believe him when he rants about Phil Gramm and the deregulatory legislation of 1999.

Was Phil Gramm one the key architects behind that legislation? Yes. Is he one of the key architects of McCain's economic plan? Yes...though he has been off the payroll since July.

However, as is the custom of the liberal media who wish for Obama to win this election, they fail to report that two of Obama's key supporters, Jim Leash and James Johnson, were also key architects of that legislation. Obama claims that's irrelevent, that Leash and Johnson are not key advisors for him. And yet, if Johnson is not a key advisor on Obama's economic poliy, why is he in Florida right now with the advance Obama team advising him on how to respond to this economic crisis.

Did McCain vote in favor of the 1999 deregulatory legislation? Yes. But so did the majority of the Democrats, including Biden. Who's administration signed the bill? Bill Clinton's. In fact, the Clinton administration pushed for the advancement of the Carter Administration's Community Redevelopment Act. Some have described Clinton as having put this Act onto steroids. The Clinton administration helped create the current market of high-risk sub prime loans which is now wreaking havoc on Wall Street.

Obama is also claiming that McCain is in the pockets of the lending institution lobbyists. Yet, Obama has received the third most amount of money from these lobbyists of anyone. Only Dodd and Kerry have received more money from the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac lobbyists. McCain took NO money from them.

Lastly, what might Obama's roll be in this crisis? Well, McCain, in 2005, helped write legislation that would have reformed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from "...[exposure] 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 legislation was defeated in the Senate when the Democrats blocked the bill. Barack Obama voted with his colleagues to block to bill. So who, in hindsight, would like for that bill to have been passed? So who is to blame that it didn't? Certainly NOT McCain.

Obama has dug himself a big hole. The latest polls show the public, at present, is believing him. Yet, the hole is dug, nonetheless. And perhaps the polls are giving Obama a false sense of security. It would serve McCain well if he would give Obama the tiniest of pushes right about now...or at the Debate on September 26th.

The Case For Voting For McCain

I will not pretend to know every detail necessary to making a completely informed decision about who to vote for in this year's race. Frankly, the candidates tend to do a good job of making sure that the election is NOT about issues, despite what they say. They play to emotion and tweak our personal buttons. Its what politicians do.

However, I have done enough research to know certain facts that have made McCain the clear choice for my vote this year. Here are some of the more important elements that went into my decision.

1. Experience: If experience were the only component in my decision, I'd vote for Biden, not McCain or Obama. But McCain is not running against Biden. He is running against Obama. And in a head-to-head comparison between the two presidential candidate, Obama doesn't stand a chance. McCain has military experience, congressional experience, party leadership experience, bi-partisan experience and leadership experience. Obama falls desperately short on most all of those elements.

With regards to the VP candidates, I am not afraid to put them both on the same level, though from differing backgrounds. Biden is thoroughly experienced legislatively, as a party leader and general leader. But Palin has executive, buck-stops-here, experience. And it does not mean little to me that Palin is, thusfar, uncorrupted by Washington.

2. Change: Change is the key word of both candidates. When first looking into this, at first, I was trying to determine who really stood for change. After researching both candidates I have concluded they both want to change things. So, the question changed from who really stands for change to what change do they want to infuse into Washington?

This is where the candidates diverged. Both candidates talk about ending earmarks, and dealing with corruption, and ending partisan politics. But which candidate really means these things.

Whereas McCain has voted against earmarks on all of the last 35 bills which contained earmarks, Obama voted against only 2 of them.

Whereas McCain stood up to his own party on many occasions, Obama has never voted against his own party.

Whereas McCain warned the President and the Senate about the dangers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Obama somehow blames McCain (solely because he is a Republican and Obama wished to blame Bush for this problem and McCain by association). Yet Obama, being a Senator, LIKE McCain, did nothing to solve the problem two years ago.

McCain put his desires to be President at serious risk by bucking the popular vote and supporting the surge in troops in Iraq. Obama would have rather just gotten out. WHY? The only reasons I can think of for doing that is either because he was against in the first place and he just doesn't see the disaster of not finishing the job, no matter how justified he was for not wanting the war in the first place. Or he was just trying to lure in the extreme leftists voting base for the presidential run he was going to make.

When it was becoming clear a week or two ago that the Feds were going to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Obama said that Washington has for too long "ignored the warning signs in the housing and financial markets." And exactly WHO had warned Washington...MCCAIN. And who did NOT heed that warning? Bush and Congress...which INCLUDES OBAMA.

Whereas both McCain and Obama say they want to cross party lines to achieve bipartisan change, only McCain has a track record of doing that as a Senator.

Whereas Obama has virtually NEVER voted against his party line in the Senate, John McCain has voted against party lines nearly a third of time.

Whereas both say they want to end wasteful spending, only McCain has never placed earmarks on any legislation and Obama has porked nearly $1 billion in earmarks. In addition, Obama DID stop adding earmarks to legislation a year ago, coincidently about the time he began his Real Change presidential campaign.

Obama's view of change, after thorough review, means little more than he wants to change the White House from Republican to Democrat. That seems to be what he wants to change. And in so doing, he wants to change the policies eminating from the White House from Bush policies to liberal policies. This, of course, led to the question of what liberal policies he stands for.

McCain, on the other hand, seems to infer, by his push for change, that he wants to end corruption in Washington, end partisanship, and change the way decisions are made on a Federal level...exactly what he says he wants to do.

McCain has risked his life for his country. He has risked his political career for what he believes. I believe he will do what he says he wants to do as President. Obama has given me great cause for concern that he says one thing and will do something very different in office.

Finally, I am astounded that ANYONE who sees the crisis this country is in would even consider electing someone so terriby inexperienced.