What they said about Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac

The video I posted last night (among hundreds of other bloggers) has made it mainstream, sort of. The Wall Street Journal has transcribed many of the comments in the video and put them in the editorial section under the title “What They Said About Fan and Fred“. Here’s a sample of some of the more egregious comments from the “we care” party;

House Financial Services Committee hearing, Sept. 10, 2003:

Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.): I worry, frankly, that there’s a tension here. The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disaster scenarios. . . .

Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.), speaking to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez:

Secretary Martinez, if it ain’t broke, why do you want to fix it? Have the GSEs [government-sponsored enterprises] ever missed their housing goals?
* * *
Rep. Waters: However, I have sat through nearly a dozen hearings where, frankly, we were trying to fix something that wasn’t broke. Housing is the economic engine of our economy, and in no community does this engine need to work more than in mine. With last week’s hurricane and the drain on the economy from the war in Iraq, we should do no harm to these GSEs. We should be enhancing regulation, not making fundamental change.

Mr. Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and in particular at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines. Everything in the 1992 act has worked just fine. In fact, the GSEs have exceeded their housing goals. . . .

Senate Banking Committee, Oct. 16, 2003:

Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.): And my worry is that we’re using the recent safety and soundness concerns, particularly with Freddie, and with a poor regulator, as a straw man to curtail Fannie and Freddie’s mission. And I don’t think there is any doubt that there are some in the administration who don’t believe in Fannie and Freddie altogether, say let the private sector do it. That would be sort of an ideological position.

Mr. Raines: But more importantly, banks are in a far more risky business than we are.

These are the people we want to put in charge of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Short-sighted vindictive little cretins whose concern for the voters only go as far as the next election. Republicans have tried to regulate the two mortgage giants, the President has tried 17 times in this last year to rein in the two GSEs with no support from the Democrats. They try to lay it at the feet of the Republicans for what happened a decade ago while taking no responsibility for their behavior in the last five years while the crisis built.

Funny, but the Washington Post is too concerned with tearing down Gov. Palin to pay attention to what the party they support caused.

Category: Liberals suck, Politics