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Leveraging Fannie and Freddie

by Conn Carroll | September 9, 2008 at 10:56 AM

I sure hope the McCain campaign has a TV ad in the can on this Fannie/Freddie bailout. There is simply no better issue that better crystallizes why McCain's 'reform' is more needed now than Obama's empty 'change.'

Fannie and Freddie are exactly the type of New Deal/Great Society public-private partnership relics that would blossom under an Obama administration. And as the Fannie and Freddie meltdown show, they are also absolute disasters waiting to happen.

Conservatives haven been pushing for major reform of Fannie and Freddie for years. But we've been thwarted by a nexus of high paid lobbyists and Obama allies like ACORN. Remember, the first Washington insider the Obama campaign tapped to help them find a VP was Fannie CEO Jim Johnson. A man who personally made it easier for Fannie to help Countrywide Financial make billions of dollars in bad subprime loans.

And it gets betters: as Jonah Goldberg notes, Obama is the third top recipient of Freddie/Fannie cash (behind only Chris Dodd and John Kerry). Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has explicitly said: "[T]next administration must decide what role government in general, and these entities in particular, should play in the housing market." There is no way this can not be a major issue in this campaign.

So on the right we have proven reformer and Fannie/Freddie influence foe John McCain, and on the left we have top Frannie/Freddie cash recipient and ACORN lover Barack Obama. This is a sure winner.

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Comments

The Democrat's Enron

Submitted by Jeff Roberts on Tue, 09/09/2008 - 13:51.

Except in the case of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, taxpayers will be picking up the bill instead of shareholders, and no one will go to prison.  Isn't government great?

McCain should hit Obama hard on this.  These two organizations have a lot to do with the housing bubble, and Americans won't take kindly to politicians who have profited from their activities.

These two organizations have been honeypots for the Democrats for years.  All it took was a few hundred billion dollar loss on the taxpayer's dime to end the party.

I am so alone.

Submitted by davidfarrar on Tue, 09/09/2008 - 22:38.

Look people, McCain is also supporting this corporate socialism scheme. He can't come out against it because he is and has been a part of it for as long as it has been around.

You don't hear him saying he's against the buyout, do you? What we have here is a classic demonstration of how a fiscal conservative Republican raises taxes nowadays, they simply spend more money then they bring in. The result, the Feds print more money and the dollars you have in your pockets gets twenty percent lighter.

Good Grief!

ex animo

davidfarrar

No Hat Tip?

Submitted by Ironman on Tue, 09/09/2008 - 18:49.

For Wicca's sake, anyone reading my blog posts would have been all over this one

You are absolutely right, particularly as dinosaur Democrats like Chris Dodd are trying to make it sound like Hank Poulson panicked by putting down these sick puppies. Frankly, the medicine adminstrered to date is way too weak to address the culture of self-dealing which must be shut down yesterday

 

Fannie Mae

Submitted by BIGUS DICUS on Tue, 09/09/2008 - 22:36.

You posit this BS when  one of McCain's top dogs, Rick Davis, is a former Fannie/Freddie lobbyist?