Prophetic NYT Article in 1999

Shandril said: Good find. The writing's been on the wall for almost a decade.

There are a lot of people who've been in position to do something about it during all those years who've been asleep at the wheel. Or worse than asleep at the wheel, accomplice of the whole debacle when they promoted more excesses (bargain low interest rates fro years, ARMania, 0 down payment, etc.) rather than acknowledging that it was a train wreck waiting to happen. It's hard to believe that some lenders, Feds, or government officials still have the nerve of claiming having been blindsided by the phenomena when the risks were clear back almost 10 years ago.The train wreck was not supposed to happen because the brains of the industry (math Phd's) did not anticipate nor factor in any huge drops in housing prices nationally. Neither did they factor in perfect storm scenarios I'm sure. How that escaped them is beyond me...for everyone in the housing bubble thread circa 2003 saw it coming....well not everyone in that thread.

What's interesting is back then, WB warned unregulated derivatives were WMFD and no one in the White House or Federal Reserve took heed. The public barely understood the concepts behind securitization and derivatives, and only when trouble hinted were questions asked. Later however Greenspan warned that the reassessment of periods of low risk will not end kindly (or something to that effect). So basically he knew that threats to financial innovation existed...but I think he was unwilling to predict the outcome of one event without putting it in the context of other future unknown events and who knew how decoupled Asia would be from the rest of the world at the exact time housing fell apart. However, what I do hold the administration responsible for was the lack of oversight and regulation to safeguard us against worst case scenarios. Furthermore, there has been a general reluctance to take the conservative, slower growth route for the last 25 years. Healthy GDP growth was so necessary for our long term prosperity and foreign policy success that I think putting questionable safeguards in place was simply tossed out.

nycll said: Ustas said: Guess what? Franklin Raines now one of Barak Obama' top advisers. Only according to a McCain Ad based on disputable facts:

According to Washington Post fact checkers,

Analysis: This John McCain ad is based on a disputed premise. There's no dispute that Obama has no background in economics -- but then, neither does McCain, which makes this an odd charge for the Arizona senator to hurl.

Fannie Mae did collapse, requiring a government takeover, and Raines, its former chairman, paid $25 million in April to settle a case brought by federal authorities investigating his role in the agency's accounting problems. But he has never been a close adviser to Obama.I highted the key points for the reading challenged.

Last time I checked Washington Post is not owned by any presidential candidates' campaigns. Keep in mind no matter where the editorial pages fall the hard news of the legit media will be held accountable if they print inacurate fact. Dan Rather did take the fall for inacurate reporting of GWB's national guard service.

Ustas said: Oh, and I forgot to add... James Johnson, another crook, former CEO of Fannie Mae... he's top Obama' advisor now. LOL, you are in the habit of throwing out statements without any link to back you up.

Here is a GSE linkage for your enjoyment: Fredie Mac Money Trail Catches Up With McCain. . It is not an opinion page.

owenscott said: nycII said: Dan Rather did take the fall for inacurate reporting of GWB's national guard service. Really Rather took it on the chin for failure to do due diligence. With most facts in the case pointing to the item being a forged document he went ahead with it any way. Facts are stubborn things some times and sometimes ignored by the media.Ultimately media corrected the mistake, pretty quickly I have to say. What happened in this case is consistent with my statement that the main stream media will be held accountable for what they print as hard news. Do you disagree?

In a very simple word yes ...i'm quick to mention the NY times article about Mccain sleeping with some woman ... lobbyest(SP?)? ... never a retraction ... never an apology .... nothing ..... MSM did nothing to stop it. (and the NY times had this non-story when they endorsed him ..??.. )
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The only reason MSM did anything about ratherGATE was the bloggers made a news story about them NOT covering it and if they didn't cover it would seem all the more biased. IMHO .... but look at the time line.....
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As far as the story linking Mccain to the former worker from freddie mac .. at worst he did nothing to harm the company and did very little for it at all it seems beside take a check.
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Hardly the guy who cheated and brought the company to its knees being an obama advisor (how much of an advisory is up for question). A better point is how much Mccain took from them in donations ... which really isn't a story at all.

Most of the posts on FWF have sought to blame the other side for the credit crisis, but the fact of the matter is that both sides share blame. Broadly speaking, Democrats wanted Fannie/Freddie to offer loans that allowed minorities with poor credit to become homeowners when they had no business being homeowners, as pointed out many times in this thread. However, F/F were a relatively insignificant portion of the subprime mortgage market. At the height of the housing bubble (and subprime loan market) in 2006, F/F represented less than 40% of the entire mortgage market. This article written by the Dallas Federal Reserve describes the changes in the mortgage market that occurred during the height of the housing bubble:

"Some 80 percent of outstanding U.S. mortgages are prime, while 14 percent are subprime and 6 percent fall into the near-prime category. These numbers, however, mask the explosive growth of nonprime mortgages. Subprime and near-prime loans shot up from 9 percent of newly originated securitized mortgages in 2001 to 40 percent in 2006...Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the largest GSEs, with Ginnie Mae being smaller. These enterprises guarantee the loans and pool large groups of them into RMBS. They're then sold to investors...Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, however, haven't packaged many nonprime mortgages into RMBS...Lacking the same perceived status, nonagency RMBS—those not issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae—faced the hurdle of paying investors extremely large premiums to compensate them for high default risk. These high costs would have pushed nonprime interest rates to levels outside the reach of targeted borrowers...This is where financial innovations came into play. Some—like collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), a common RMBS derivative—were designed to protect investors in nonagency securities against default losses." These CDOs were packaged by Wall Street with the loans having been originated by New Century Financial, Ameriquest, Countrywide, etc. [Remember them? Most of those subprime mortgage lenders folded in early 2007, long before F/F started having problems.] They are discussed in this mortgage industry trade publication touting the subprime business in 2005. It was this private secondary market packaged by Wall Street that represented the craziest lending [called non-conforming loans b/c they did not conform to F/F more strict underwriting standards] and precipitated the subprime mortgage crisis.

At first, F/F seemed to have dodged the bullet, but then we saw a precipitous drop in home prices caused by defaults in the subprime loans made possible by the unregulated Wall Street securitization industry, so that's the role played by the deregulation of the financial industry (broadly speaking, a Republican project, e.g. Gramm spearheaded the repeal of Glass-Steagall). Then once home prices started dropping, it became clear that F/F were undercapitalized [due to insufficient regulation of F/F, primarily thanks to Democrats] and could not shoulder the losses on their portfolio... And here we are today. So, I don't think it helps to point fingers at the other party b/c both share responsibility.

above said: Democrats wanted Fannie/Freddie to offer loans that allowed minorities with poor credit

Did they really make them do loans to people with bad credit ....... ? I'm no fan of marxist democrats but calling for minority home loans doesn't mean they have to loan to bad credit risks. I thought it was a natural outshoot for people who were just scamming the system.

jahnke771 said: A group called the Center for Responsive Politics keeps track of which politicians get Fannie and Freddie political contributions. The top three U.S. senators getting big Fannie and Freddie political bucks were Democrats and No. 2 is Sen. Barack Obama.

Now remember, he's only been in the Senate four years, but he still managed to grab the No. 2 spot ahead of John Kerry — decades in the Senate — and Chris Dodd, who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

Fannie and Freddie have been creations of the congressional Democrats and the Clinton White House, designed to make mortgages available to more people and, as it turns out, some people who couldn't afford them.Not sure what numbers you (or Fox News) are looking at, but here are the top 10 Fannie Mae PAC recipients report for 2006 (compiled every 2 years) Linked

Talent, James M (R-MO) $10,000
Menendez, Robert (D-NJ) $10,000
Harris, Katherine (R-FL) $9,000
Conrad, Kent (D-ND) $9,000
Carper, Tom (D-DE) $9,000
Santorum, Rick (R-PA) $8,000
Nelson, Ben (D-NE) $7,500
Chafee, Lincoln D (R-RI) $7,500
Bennett, Robert F (R-UT) $7,500
Clinton, Hillary (D-NY) $7,000
Burns, Conrad (R-MT) $7,000

Obama that cycle had a $2,000 contribution (#28 on the list), in 2004 (year he was elected), he recieved a similar $2k contribution), he is not even listed on the 2008 list (neither is McCain).

Neither McCain or Obama are on the Freddie Mac PAC list.

Now there may be some other ways that contributions are calculated, but those are only reference I found for Freddie or Fannie on their site. I also didn't see any way to find a cumulative total (only reporting years), but maybe if you have an account and log in, there are other reports available. It appears that what Fox News, sorry you, are doing is playing fast and loose with the statistics, the total contributions to the campaign includes individual donations from employees of Freddie and Fannie, that is hardly the same as lobbying money.

BTW, here's the link to Fox article from which you stole your post word for word. You really should change a word or two when you plagerize, don't they teach that at your school?

While I'm at it, here's the article with the facts about Obama and the "supposed" links of advisors to Fannie/Freddie