Fannie Mae, the Federal National Mortgage Association and Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, own about half of America’s $12 trillion mortgage market.
Even though Fannie Mae goes back to President Roosevelt’s New Deal, it is commonly known that the present focus of both Fannie and Freddie are “creations of the congressional Democrats (particularly the Congressional Black Caucus) and the Clinton White House, designed to make mortgages available to more people,” meaning minorities.
Jesse Jackson, according to the National Legal and Policy Center, has had a cozy relationship with Fannie and Freddie since 1998, when he accused Freddie of racial discrimination, encouraging major shareholders to sell their stock.
His criticisms stopped when he signed a $1 million contract with Freddie Mac for his Rainbow/PUSH “Economic Literacy” program. Since then, Fannie and Freddie have been major contributors to the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and Citizenship Education Fund Annual Conference, dropping a combined $250,000 even this year as they were in the midst of a financial meltdown.
Based on articles in Fortune magazine and The Post Chronicle, it is very clear that the housing debacle that caused foreclosures on thousands of homeowners, particularly blacks, were initiated, instigated, and exacerbated by Democrats. These include Fannie Mae Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Franklin Delano Raines, known as “the first black man to head a Fortune 500 company.”
Raines, a former Clinton White House budget director, took “early retirement” as the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) sued him for $50 million in payments he received from “accounting irregularities” of overstated earnings from an estimated $6.3 billion.
There are several million-dollar players in this meltdown, all Democrats, including James A. Johnson, another former Fannie Mae CEO, who resigned as the head of Barack Obama’s vice presidential vetting team after news that he received questionable loans from Countrywide Financial, also a part of the financial political loan scandal.
Raines and Johnson are part of Obama’s inner circle. High-ranking Democrats like Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT), chairman of the
Senate Banking Committee, and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, also received favorable financing from Countrywide as well as huge amounts from Fannie and Freddie as they pretended to provide oversight.
Obama spits fire at John McCain for having lobbyists around him, but it was Obama who, in his 143 days in the Senate, got $126,349 from Fannie and Freddie, just a little less than Dodd’s $165, 400 and more than John Kerry’s $111,000, making him number two on the Fannie/Freddie list of favored politicians.
As Obama blames McCain and President Bush for Fannie and Freddie, the facts show that both Republicans called for oversight but were thwarted by congressional Democrats. And when Obama claims to have warned about Fannie and Freddie, those watching Congress ask when Obama even spoke out, calling him an “unusually good liar.”
On Sept. 19, 2008, The White House issued a press release, “Just the Facts: The Administration’s Unheeded Warnings About the System Risk Posed by the GSEs,” detailing that since April 2001, “the President and his Administration have not only warned (17 times in 2008 alone) of the systemic consequences of financial turmoil at (Fannie and Freddie), but also put forward thoughtful plans to reduce the risk that either would encounter such difficulties.”
McCain is also on record on May 25, 2006 speaking in support of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, predicting “not only the entire collapse that has forced the government to assume obligations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but also Bear Stearns and AIG.”
So as Vincent Gioia, independent columnist for the Post Chronicle, writes “For those interested in the truth about who understands and tried to do something about the financial mess caused by the Democrat piggy banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the foregoing should be enlightening. For all others, continue to drink the Kool-Aid and press the lever for messiah Barack Obama on November 4th.”
But don’t blame us.
Barbara Howard is president of Barbara Howard & Associates and the Florida state chair for C.O.R.E. (the Congress of Racial Equality).
Photo: Barbara Howard • BHoward@bhowardandassoc.com
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