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Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Sen. Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years — including the present year — denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.
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This is well documented that the Dems were against anyone touching either Freddie or Fannie.
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It was Sen. Dodd, Congressman Frank, and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
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Again, 100% fact.
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It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today’s financial crisis.
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Welfare bribes through easier mortgages. He does however fail to point out the GOP rode on this train to an extent too.
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Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the president. So did Bush’s secretary of the Treasury, five years ago.
Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration “right-wing ideology” of “de-regulation” that set the stage for the financial crisis. Do facts matter?
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Yeah, the old "repeat it enough it becomes a fact" is played out here.
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We also hear that it is the free market that is to blame. But the facts show that it was the government that pressured financial institutions in general to lend to subprime borrowers, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and, later, threats of legal action by then Attorney General Janet Reno if the feds did not like the statistics on who was getting loans and who wasn’t.
Is that the free market? Or do facts not matter?
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EXCELLENT point he makes. The free markets work best when... left free. When you dictate that the markets do whats against their best interest...
bad things happen. What he does leave out is that the companies then used that as an excuse to profit greatly from the system. While they should have known better, and probably did, the profits were too easy to make, and after all they were told to do it.
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Then there is the question of being against the “greed” of CEOs and for “the people.” Franklin Raines made $90 million while he was head of Fannie Mae and mismanaging that institution into crisis.
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Yeah I love that one, Franklin Raines, a man THEY DEFENDED in hearings, going so far as to pull the old race card to defend him, made $90,000,000.00 while running Fannie Mae into the dirt. Where is the Dems cry about the Conservatives just out to help greedy CEO's stealing from the poor again? Oh yeah, Raines is black, can't call him out for his crimes.
Do Facts Matter? by Thomas Sowell on National Review Online