I just watched this video posted on Hot Air called "Burning Down the House" which takes a 10 minute look at the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and how it was used to push banks into sub-prime mortgages which distorted the market and created the housing bubble.
This is a good video, but as Ed Morrisey says:
A few clarifications should be made. This video lays all of the blame on Democrats, which is a natural reaction in an election year, but that lets a lot of Republicans off the hook. In 2003, the Bush administration tried to stop the runaway train of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress. Democrats alone didn’t stop this. No one filibustered the Bush administration’s bill in the Senate; it didn’t have the votes to pass anyway. Likewise in 2006, when Chuck Hagel, John McCain, John Sununu, and Elizabeth Dole attempted to fix Fannie and Freddie, Republicans controlled Congress and did nothing to pass this bill. Democrats blocked it, but without some help from Republicans, both efforts would have passed easily.
This is not just a Democratic or a Republican party problem at this point, it's everyone's problem. Both parties should take responsibility and stop playing partisan politics. You may watch the video below."-From www.OneNewsNow.com
Some other points of view on the mortgage crisis then what Big Media allows to be aired
Even though the New York Times blamed McCain for ties with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who was the number 2 recipient of contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac according to the very same article? Obama or McCain.
Networks, Once Silent on Fannie Mae, Blame Capitalism for Debacle-"As politicians point fingers over who created the financial mess that has taken down major Wall Street players and resulted in the government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the broadcast media’s role in the disaster has been largely overlooked.
It was the TV news media that practically ignored mounting problems – including accounting scandals – at Fannie Mae and her brother Freddie Mac until it was too late.
This year between Jan. 1 and July 14, the network news media barely touched on problems with the two government-sponsored entities (GSEs) and neglected to mention its scandal-ridden past.
NBC’s “Today” show hinted at problems with Fannie and Freddie on July 14 when Andrea Mitchell reported Sen. John McCain’s, R-Ariz., reaction to a bailout:
“John McCain also says the survival of the mortgage giants is essential, despite some of their past practices,” said Mitchell. Viewers were left to wonder what those “past practices” could have been. Here are a few hints: billions of dollars in accounting scandals, millions of dollars in fines, stock prices that have plummeted, connections to prominent Democratic politicians and a high-risk portfolio.
But a Sept. 23 Wall Street Journal op-ed written by Charles W. Calomiris, finance and economics professor at Columbia Business School, and Peter J. Wallison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, laid the blame for the current financial crisis at the feet of Fannie and Freddie.
“The poor choices of these two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) – and their sponsors in Washington – are largely to blame for our current mess,” Calomiris and Wallison said.
As problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac intensified in August and September 2008, the media switched to attacks on deregulation and Republicans.
Jim Cramer, of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” said on ABC’s “Nightline” Sept. 17 that on cause was “whole nations basically that allowed regulations go by the wayside so anybody could do anything.”
CBS News also blamed “too little government regulation” for Fannie and Freddie’s failure. On Sept. 8, CBS asked, “What brought these financial powerhouses to the brink of collapse? Critics say it was a combination of the companies’ political clout and too little government regulation.”
As if blaming deregulation wasn’t enough, The New York Times online attacked Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on Sept. 24 for ties to Freddie Mac, but glossed over Sen. Barack Obama’s, D-Ill., connection to Fannie and Freddie. And never mind Barney Frank’s (see related story).
The Times story buried campaign contribution figures for both candidates until the very last paragraph of the 1,401 word story. According to the article, since 2004 “Senator Obama has received about $126,000 in contributions from employees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while Senator McCain, over the last decade, has received about $22,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.”
Obama was the number 2 recipient of contributions from Fannie and Freddie, compared to McCain’s 62 – but the Times didn’t mention that.
The warnings didn’t start in 2008. In 2004, as The Wall Street Journal declared Fannie Mae was “cooking the books” to the tune of $11 billion dollars, ABC, CBS and NBC were almost silent. A search of LexisNexis for “Fannie Mae,” at the height of the scandal (June 1, 2004 to Mar. 1, 2005) turned up a paltry 37 stories.
During that time CBS only referenced Fannie Mae five times – although in one the network did call the situation an “accounting scandal.” The words “Fannie Mae” didn’t show up once for ABC, while CNN registered only 31 hits – less than 3 percent of the coverage it gave the Enron scandal over a similar time period.
Even in 2008, the network news media has mentioned Enron more than Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac combined.
Unlike TV reporters, print journalists warned of Fannie’s and Freddie’s accounting problems for years, extended risk and cozy Washington, D.C. relationships for more than six years.
As far back as 2002, The Wall Street Journal was comparing Fannie Mae to Enron in its editorial pages. A Feb. 20, 2002 editorial entitled “Fannie Mae Enron?” exposed the high debt and poor risk management of Fannie and Freddie.
“The more we’ve since looked at Fan and Fred the more they look like poorly run hedge funds: lots of leverage and snarkily hedged risk. The word Enron ring any bells?” said the Journal editorial.
It turned out that Fannie Mae’s financial fiasco was – at that time – 19 times bigger than Enron’s. Yet, the TV news media on ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC barely made a peep. Now with the federal bailout, that number is much higher.
So why were Fannie and Freddie given a free pass by the broadcast media? It might have something to do with their mission of helping low-income families buy homes.
In 2004, Newsweek’s Charles Gasparino said in a CNN appearance, “Well, Fannie Mae is a very politically corrupt – it may be politically corrupt, but it’s a politically correct company. I mean, they do all the things that, let’s face, liberal journalists like, like put home mortgages out there for poor people. And so right now, beating up on Fannie Mae is kind of politically incorrect.”
Gasparino admitted that “This is a huge story, and it’s going overlooked.”
Judging by 2008 media coverage of the issue, Fannie and Freddie are apparently still politically correct enough to not be blamed for their bad behavior."
When Watchdogs Snore: How ABC, CBS & NBC Ignored Fannie & Freddie-"The two mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae -- seized by the government September 7 before they went completely bankrupt, at a potential cost to taxpayers of more than $25 billion -- have been in obvious trouble for much of the past five years -- with criminal investigations, accounting scandals, firings, resignations, huge losses and warnings from the Federal Reserve that their huge portfolio of mortgage securities posed a risk to the overall financial system.
But prior to this year, the watchdogs at ABC, CBS and NBC found time for only 10 stories on the financial health and management of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A review of the three networks' morning and evening news programs from January 1, 2003 through December 31, 2007 found nine anchor-read items or brief references to the companies troubles, plus one in-depth report by CBS's Anthony Mason on the May 23, 2006 Evening News, after Fannie Mae was fined $400 million for accounting fraud....It's not that the networks eschew business news. A 2005 report from the MRC's Business and Media Institute found heavy coverage of the scandal surrounding Enron, but no interest in the growing scandal surrounding Fannie Mae: "A LexisNexis search of ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN on the term 'Enron' from the nine months around when the story first broke -- Oct. 1, 2001, to July 1, 2002, produced 3,017 hits....A similar LexisNexis search was performed for the term 'Fannie Mae' for those same media, from June 1, 2004, to March 1, 2005, again during the time the story was breaking. This search discovered a paltry 37 matches." See: http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialreports/2005/fannie_mae/fannie_mae.asp
See Bush and McCain blamed for bad economy? What the media is not telling you about Obama's tax cuts for 95% of Americans?! Introducing abortion survivor! and scroll down to Big media stupendously uncritical of Obama's Tax Cut plan and the last article in that section: "Actually, a little -- two years ago, I warned that the oversight of Fannie and Freddie was, was terrible, that we were facing a crisis because of it, or certainly serious problems"-McCain..."In fact, it was Democrats who blocked Bush administration proposals to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2003. 2003 New York Times article that detailed efforts by Democrats to block reforms: query.nytimes.com."-See also, Media is not giving you the whole Mortgage Crisis story: Fannie and Freddie is Enron x 19/Microsoft Sized Monopoly/Leading Compaign Giver and Lobbyist."
Scapegoating Tax Cuts-"Stephen Moore reported in December 2007 that the top 1 percent of income earners pay about 37 percent of all income taxes. That is more than they were paying before the Bush tax cuts and way more than they would have paid had the Bush tax cuts not been enacted. The Treasury Department estimates that had the cuts not gone into effect, the top 1 percent would have paid 31 percent. Thus, the wealthy, while paying lower marginal rates, are paying a greater percentage of the taxes, just as those dastardly supply-siders predicted. The top 10 percent, by the way, are paying 68 percent under the cuts, while Treasury estimates that they would have paid 63 percent without the cuts....How about the top 5 percent -- the group particularly targeted for punishment by Obama and Biden? Remember, their plan is to lower taxes for 95 percent.
Currently, the top 5 percent is paying 57 percent of all income taxes. If only 5 percent paying 57 percent is not enough, can you tell me what would be, especially when you consider that the bottom 50 percent of income earners pay less than 4 percent of all income taxes?
If Obama is going to cut taxes for 95 percent, how much will he have to raise taxes on the other 5 percent just to compensate for the lost revenue from the 95 percent? A supply-sider might say, "Not much at all because reducing marginal rates (to a point) increases revenues." But anti-supply-siders such as Obama can't say that without exposing themselves to further fraud. They dispute the premise.
Espousing a zero-sum analysis on tax rates and revenue, they believe that tax cuts necessarily reduce revenues. Thus, they owe us an explanation as to how much more the top 5 percent will have to pay just to have a net zero effect on revenues. And how much more than that to yield a net increase in revenues?
But even if Obama could achieve a net revenue increase under his plan, he still must explain how increased revenue would have prevented or alleviated the mortgage crisis. And, Sen. Obama, please don't give us some convoluted nonsense about deficit reductions being a panacea, because no matter how harmful deficits might be, they had nothing to do with this mortgage crisis.
The crisis has largely been caused by reckless liberal do-goodism and corruption, not Bush tax policy.
Regardless, these inconvenient truths won't keep Obama from scapegoating the Bush tax cuts because this isn't about changing policies to strengthen the economy; it's about stoking the fires of class envy to divide and alienate Americans..."
The Hair of the Dog-"The private sector got us into this mess. The government has to get us out of it," said Barney Frank, which illustrates why conservatives often say liberals have a socialist bent.
Free market conservatives understand that many problems have been caused by government's officious intermeddling in the private sector. The subprime mortgage crisis is no exception.
History has shown that liberal prescriptions don't work, but when they fail, liberals invariably not only deny responsibility for their do-gooder manipulation but also insist on even more government intrusion....
For example, many of our health care problems can be traced to increased government control and the reduction of market forces. Yet the liberal solution is full-blown nationalized health care....Which brings us back to the current subprime mortgage crisis. When we strip away all the complexity, we discover that social planning largely led to this debacle. Government politicians and bureaucrats forced lending institutions to make un-creditworthy loans and helped create unnatural demand in the housing market by priming the pump on bad loans. This created an unnatural price bubble in real estate, which was securing these ill-advised loans. When the bubble inevitably burst, the mortgages secured by the artificially inflated real estate plummeted in value, which left us with an epidemic of grossly under-secured loans.
Now the stability of our entire financial system is said to be at risk. It's so bad that even conservatives are considering supporting an unprecedented plan approaching a trillion dollars to "bail out" the financial industry...Wouldn't it be a refreshing surprise if liberals, who created this monster of a financial mess by their incorrigible commitment to the magic of government, would participate in good faith -- instead of partisan exploitation -- to find a solution?"
Other News that reveals Liberal Bias in different ways
In the University
Palin-bashing arrives on campus-"A college student in Denver is creating a stir after notifying the media that her English professor gave her classmates an anti-Sarah Palin writing assignment. Janna Barber is a student at Metro State College in Denver, Colorado, where she attends an English class taught by Andrew Hallam -- who she describes as a "self-styled liberal Bush basher." The controversy began when Hallam gave an assignment that directed his students to write an essay contradicting what he called the "fairy tale image" of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Furthermore, according to Barber, Hallam asked Republican students to identify themselves, and then he sat back and laughed while other students ridiculed them and shouted four-letter obscenities. This upset Barber, who filed a complaint with the school and brought the matter to the attention of the local CBS affiliate. Since then she has appeared on Fox News and the O'Reilly Factor. Matt Barber is Janna's older brother and the director of cultural affairs at Liberty Counsel. He says the school has been "obstinate" about the incident thus far......But Matt says since the story broke, Hallam has announced the assignment will include other political figures such as Barack Obama and John McCain. Regardless, Matt contends the damage is already done. He also believes this problem is not isolated. "So I would encourage -- and I know Janna is encouraging -- other Republican and conservative students on campuses around the country to stand up and expose their professors who are trying to brainwash students on college campuses," says Matt. The local CBS affiliate quotes a school spokesperson who acknowledged that while it is the responsibility of the school to provide opportunity for critical thinking and civic engagement, Hallem "should have broadened [the assignment] and included all the political figures."
UMass Chaplain Urges Students to Campaign for Obama-"A chaplain at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst sent an email to students last week offering them independent study credits if they campaigned for Barack Obama in New Hampshire, according to the Associated Press.Chaplain Kent Higgins wrote: “If you’re scared about the prospects for this election, you’re not alone. The most important way to make a difference in the outcome is to activate yourself. It would be just fine with McCain if Obama supporters just think about helping, then sleep in and stay home between now and Election Day.”According to University officials, Higgins wasn’t authorized to offer such credits, and that they had not approved his actions."
In the grade school
Colorado 5th Grader Suspended For Anti-Obama Shirt-"FoxNews reports: “An 11-year-old in Aurora says his first amendment rights are being trampled after he was suspended for wearing a homemade shirt that reads ‘Obama is a terrorist’s best friend.’”
Son of Democratic legislator focus of Palin e-mail probe-"FBI agents have raided the apartment of a University of Tennessee student in connection with the alleged hacking of the personal e-mail of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. According to The Chattanoogan, the student in question is David Kernell, son of a Democratic state legislator from Memphis. Mike Kernell has acknowledged that it is his son who is under investigation. The report says a federal grand jury is set to convene in Chattanooga tomorrow to deal with the case. The McCain-Palin campaign is calling the hacking "a shocking invasion of the governor's privacy and a violation of the law."
Judge steps down in Palin investigation-"Sasser says those individuals in question are outspoken supporters of Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for president. "It is a rogue investigation now," says Sasser. "You've got two prominent Democrats who stand to have their side gain now by this investigation -- and they've come out saying all kinds of statements in the press prejudging the evidence before there's even been a meeting of the Legislative Council to review any so-called evidence." Sasser says Liberty Legal Institute must find another judge to hear their suit. They are seeking an injunction to either stop the investigation or at least replace the leaders with truly impartial individuals."
Ever Heard of George Obama?-"The media has been all over Sarah Palin’s family. We all know about her brother-in-law who admitted tasering his son, and about her pregnant teenage daughter.But until I read Dinesh D'Souza's column today, I hadn’t heard of Barack Obama’s half-brother, George Obama. George lives in a 6-foot-by-10-foot hut in Kenya, getting by on one dollar a month. According to D’Souza, Barack, “who made $4 million last year, hasn’t lifted a finger to help his half-brother.”D’Souza has started a fund to help George, and so far he’s raised $2,000, mostly from very modest contributions.D’Souza’s campaign has been reported by Kenya’s leading newspaper, “The Nation.” When asked by the newspaper if he was doing this to embarrass Obama, D’Souza replied that he was. “He deserves to be embarrassed.”
