1 Yeah I don't believe that. A Mars shot is not only extremely dangerous, it's also extremely expensive, and in a period of high deficits (and we thought the Bush years were a period of high deficits; how little did we know) it's difficult to justify the expense for something that is, at its core, just a Grand Adventure. ---- Ace

Actually, it's only extremely expensive (relatively at least) if you do it the NASA big government, everyone keeps their jobs and their pork way.

2 Obama is a stuttering clusterf*ck of a miserable failure.

3 Newt Giingrich was extremely useful as an historian to Freddy Mac because he knew who the Vice President under President Arthur was and stuff.

4 Lean Six Sigma. It's all about Lean Six Sigma.

5 Whatever the problem is, if you dig hard enough, you'll find a Republican behind it.

6 Newt beat out Rick in the straw poll?  Really?

7 Gingrich has a lot of ideas. And a lot of them are really, really bad.

That he would ever praise the GSEs "business model" of privatized gains and socialized losses ought to kick his status as the new truuuuuuuue conservative in the nards. But it won't. Because Not Mitt.

8 Whatever the problem is, if you dig hard enough, you'll find a Republican behind it. Corollary: If there isn't ultimately a Republican behind it, then there is no problem and no story.

9 ace's pre-noon commentary all week has made me feel entirely too lazy. I'm doing something incredibly wrong.

10 Rule 34 applies, sadly

11

BRAD WOODHOUSE, DNC SPOKESMAN: HeÂ’s [Barney Frank] been so vital to the country at what heÂ’s done over the past several years, especially after the president [Obama] got into office. He was chairing the committee that was working with Senator Dodd that set up these consumer protections, which incredibly Republicans are fighting. [...]

Look in fact the economy would have gone straight in the toilet if not for Barney Frank and his leadership.

12 Newt endorses the model of a government-backed enterprise for handling functions that the government has gotten into.

As would any Keynesian or Neoconservative.

Rather, handle the official functions of limiting governmental involvement. Remove government (and personnel) from speculating-profiting with favoritism at the taxpayer and free market expense.

He seems to mistake who exactly was preying on whom.

How convenient.

13   10 Rule 34 applies, sadly

Posted by: Truman North at December 02, 2011 10:58 AM (I2LwF)

Which one is Rule 34? I tend to lose track after Rule 5. (look ... shiny)

14 Newt beat out Rick in the straw poll?  Really?

For a while they were tied.

15 These daily posts (often multiple) about the various faults of the GOP candidates is punching down.

It would be nice to discuss our opponent's faults once in a while.

16 Don't worry,unemployment is down to 8.6%.RECOVERY WINTER!!

17 15 In a word, SCOAMF.

18 Barack Obama is a stuttering clusterf*ck of a miserable failure.

19

Rule 34:  For everything on the Interhole, there is an alternate, porno version

 

20 Okay, what was the movie, this time?  Is this the new Muppets review?

21 As would any Keynesian or Neoconservative.

Bingo.  There's the question to be asked of Newt:

"Do you believe Keynesian economics works?"

Any answer short of "Hell No" should be an instant non-starter for most people with an IQ over 95 ...

22 That he would ever praise the GSEs "business model" of privatized gains and socialized losses ought to kick his status as the new truuuuuuuue conservative in the nards. But it won't. Because Not Mitt. Posted by: Andy at December 02, 2011 10:58 AM (5Rurq) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Too bad Newt never actually made any such argument. Just because you describe Fannie and Freddie in those terms and Newt argued in favor of them in broader terms, does not mean Newt argued in favor of your characterization of them. Intellectual dishonesty FAIL. The fact is, there is an argument to be made - exactly as Newt made it - for a private / public entity to advance the causes gov't deems necessary or advantageous. Do I agree Fannie and Freddie fall under the constitutional directive for the US gov't ? Hell no. Is the semi-public / semi-private student loan arrangement better than an all gov't, NO private loan system ? Hell yes. The idea that what Newt was doing here, which is really not even making that much money in consulting circles is some horrific faux pas, is ridiculous. Especially considering the broader electorate. Democrats have been fighting the very idea that Fannie and Freddie had anything to do with crisis in the first place. But now they are going to do a 180 to go after Newt ? Don't count on it. You think this makes him less attractive as a conservative ? Great, don't vote for him in the primary. But its not going to hurt him overall. Is Barack Obama, recipient of more campaign cash (as in hundreds of millions of dollars) from Wall St than any politician in history really going to make hay over $1.5 million in consulting fees ? Doubtful.

23 the fact that U3 is down to 8.6 while more people every week lose a job illustrates the futility and disingenuousness of U3.

24

18 Barack Obama is a stuttering clusterf*ck of a miserable failure.

Posted by: AllenG (Dedicated Tenther) says 'No' to RINO Romney at December 02, 2011 11:06 AM (8y9MW)

This is the glue that holds us all together.

25 "Rule 34:  For everything on the Interhole, there is an alternate, porno version" Don't forget the second bit: if the porn version doesn't exist, you are required to create it.

26 Sadly, I agree with Newt: presuming Government intervention is inevitable, far better to have a Government Sponsored Entity than just having the Government do it.

Of course, that's built on two lies, and the correct thing to do is to expose those lies.

Lie 1: The government should do it.  No, the Government has no business in home ownership.
Lie 2: A GSE will be responsive to market forces.  No, a GSE-by definition- is Government Backed, and therefore immune to market forces.

27

Intellectual dishonesty FAIL.

There was probably a snottier and more obnoxious way to say that, but I can't think of it right now.

28 And Gincrich would respond 'So you wrote a letter, but how did you actually VOTE?' And then follow with a wonderful discussion about how politicians say (or write) one thing and then when it really counts, when he really could have made a difference, he chose party over the country.

29 Promoting home ownership is not a bad thing in and of itself, and it had been a staple of conservative thought for a while - an ownership society. People don't own the projects, so they get all shitty. People don't own pensions, so they don't care what backs them. Promoting home ownership and 401ks were conservative ideas to address those issues. In the whole promote the general welfare thing, having a land of homeowners is better than building a bunch of projects. So as noted, the MODEL is not entirely bad. Sure, it isn't directly in the Constitution, but in a country determined to throw money down the shithole, its a better way to go about it. At least until crony/phony capitalists get in charge and loot the place. Here is where it should get personalized. Abstracting the problem to anti-redlining measures is down in the weeds stuff. Make the face of it the people who did the bad stuff, the people who walked away with millions and millions not for bad ideas, but bad practices. Promoting home ownership: good. Lending to anyone who is breathing in order to get big ass bonuses: bad. Sic the OWS'ers on Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick and Rahm Emmanuel and everyone else who looted us. Alinsky knew. Obama knows that Alinksy works. Newt gets it - the problem with Dodd-Frank is Dodd and Frank.

30 for a private / public entity to advance

And what, exactly, do you think "Government Sponsored Entity" means?  What do you think a "private / public entity" is.  What does the "public" do in such an entity?

There is only one thing the "public" can do- absorb (socialize) loss.  And that means that any "private / public entity" is- by definition- immune to market forces.

I'll say it again: if (and only if) Government intervention is inevitable anyway, then a GSE is better than pure Government involvement.  But I do not accept that Government intervention should be inevitable.

31

damn straw poll results show Gingrich ahead of my man Perry, time for more hit pieces.  Let's see, Gingrich likes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.......what a fricken socialist, do you think someone as truly conservative and American as Rick Perry would stoop so low as to eat peanut butter.....but what's worse is that Gingrich actually claims to only like one brand of peanut butter.....we need to know exactly whether he likes one brand only or if he has an affinity for more than one brand......

 

Attack Gingrich he is threatening the establishment's chosen one.

32 Looks like some people here can't get enough of crony capitalism. I look forward to a GSE that is designed to make me affluent. For the good of the economy. And I demand far less than hundreds of billions. Just a few mil, please. The taxpayer won't even notice.

33 At this point, we're just looking for the least-shitty candidate.

34 There was probably a snottier and more obnoxious way to say that

We could ask JeffB.  He could probably come up with one.

So as noted, the MODEL is not entirely bad. Sure, it isn't directly in the Constitution, but in a country determined to throw money down the shithole, its a better way to go about it.

Incorrect.  The Idea is not entirely bad.  The Model is inherently flawed.  It is Conservative to "encourage" home ownership.  But the way to do that is to limit regulatory and taxation hurdles to that home ownership, and to limit inducements or subsidies for non-home-ownership.

The direct involvement in the mortgage industry is inherently not Conservative.

35 I really don't need to know the details of Gingrich's services to Freddie/Fannie. Nothing, not a single thing, he did was worth a million dollars. Nothing. It should be apparent that one of the chief functions of these entities was to/is to line the pockets of currently out-of-office politicians, mainly democrats, but obviously Republicans too. And their friends. Frankly, while it would be supremely hypocritical, Obama can legitimately knock Newt for his sloppy dining at the government trough.

36 Wow! Who can write so many words before lunch?

37 I think conservatives have been saying the Post Office is an expensive failure for years.
Arguing that for any form of GSE is like saying the Post Office system works and we need more of them.

Yes, I am saying Newt is not a small-government conservative.

If you loved "compassionate conservative," your going to love v2.0, Newt Gingrich.

38

On the other hand, if a function is of much more recent vintage, like the Freddie and Fannie programs, the most conservative solution would be to simply end the programs entirely.

Exactly, Ace.

I like intellectuals. .....But the problem I have with Newt is that he is an intellectual who is intellectually dishonest at times.

Take for example, his history of cheating on his wives. An honest person would free themselves of their marital encumbrance before engaging in a new relationship. .....But Newt chose to secure new relationships before he shed his old ones. ....This should tell us something about the man's core belief system. 

I am not convinced that Newt really believes in free market capitalism. ...He has a history of ignoring the principles that he claims to adhere to, when they are momentarily inconvenient.

39 Someone explain to me why Bloomberg is all of a sudden concerned with crony capitalism and Hank Paulson placing Fannie and Freddie in conservatorship.

40

***FACEPALM***

Ace, I really hate to tell you this, but a whole lot of this post is simply garbage and you really need to get some lessons in what these GSEs are and how they work before you opine on them.  And you especially need to understand this:

Reining in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was NEVER a "conservative vs. liberal" issue.  Literally DOZENS of great conservatives in Congress consistently supported them, because they had incredible propaganda machines and especially because they had the Realtors and Homebuilders blocking and tackling for them. 

The politics of housing have always been:  Realtors and Homebuilders  and other homeowership advocates = Republicans; low-income housing advocates = Democrats.  The evil genius of Fannie and later Freddie (believe me, Freddie was WAY WAY behind Fannie it its political operation) was that they figured out ways to make their business model appealing to both sides.

These were public companies.  Let me repeat that.  THESE WERE PUBLIC COMPANIES.  Shares traded on NYSE.  They got some government-granted breaks like an exemption from local property taxes and exemptions from SEC registration requirements for their securities.  THAT'S IT.  They were NEVER subsidized by tax dollars.  Their employees were not government employees.  (They sort of are now, but that is a different story.)

The reason some people bitched about them was because they had this nebulous "implicit guarantee" of Treasury backing of their debt, which allowed them to borrow money more cheaply and pass this along in the form of very slightly lower rates on mortgages.  They were extremely touchy about this. 

A few farsighted people in Congress also saw a ticking time bomb because of the lack of regulation of the GSEs.  But THESE WERE NOT CONSERVATIVES. The biggest one was Jim Leach, who chaired the House Banking Committee and was a guy that made Mike Castle look like a conservative.  He tangled repeatedly with Fannie, I witnessed one episode that was pretty jaw-dropping after he merely mentioned the possibility of taxing their mortgage backed securites sales by like 5 basis points.

I could go on and on here.  But my point is that it is complete bullshit to make up a story now that anyone who helped Fannie or especially Freddie before the crash cannot really be a conservative, or that somehow conservatives were the only people trying to do something about them.

41 35 Quid pro quo for endorsing AGW?

42 "So I do want to know the exact services Gingrich provided for Fannie or Freddie. If it really was just a public defense of the basic model of the GSE, combined with, as he claims, private criticism offered to them about their lending practices being "insane," that's one thing. That's not so bad at all, really. Not good, certainly, but not so bad." We like the way you think.

43 You want a different way to look at what Newt did for Freddie?

Did the advice Newt offered save the taxpayer more than Newt was paid? Or did his advice allow the taxpayer to be soaked for even more taxes?

That is, we paid Newt to give them advice on how to take even more of our money.

After all, that is the True Conservative Position.

44

Wow, Rockmom bringing the heat!

45 This criticism is all well and good, and fair. In fact I agree with ace's perspective for once.

However, the issue is effectively dead. You think the media is going to focus like a laser on the failure of government as the cause of the economic crisis in the run up to 2012? We should be so lucky.

That's there real reason I'm not worried about Newt's orgs being involved with the GSEs. I'm satisfied with his current perspective on them since the collapse.

Next.

46

No metnion from the media that Bill Clinton was man who had everything with the idea of giving government backed laons to people who cannot afford to pay those loans back.

Democrat's good intensions trump the disaster.

 

47

Attack Gingrich he is threatening the establishment's chosen one.

Posted by: doug at December 02, 2011 11:14 AM (gUGI6)

Come on. Ace tries to be fair here. Dont get your speedos all twisted.

48 Doesn't the country benefit even if the GOP gets tarred? By that I mean there's finally some media focus.  I was all for getting rid of F&F completely years ago, but I'm just a stoner loser from San Fagcisco, yeah?

49 Every time I think Newt would be acceptable something like this comes up. There's so much dirt on him that he has a quarry in his back yard. I shudder to think what the NYT's October Surprise would be if Newt were the GOP nominee.

50 It is Conservative to "encourage" home ownership.

Well, is it?  Are you encouraging people to buy things they have no way of being able to afford over the long run?  Are you encouraging decades of debt and inevitable default?  If not, how are you bridging that gap?  How much of Other People's Money will be involved?  Will strings be attached?  Will you limit who can use it?  What do you offer to those paying the bill to cover the program?

The Conservative thing is to encourage people to act responsibly.  There is no substitute.

[OT Side note:  Jawa Report has trumped Ace's proprietary dual-posting technology with a quadruple post!  Let the arms race begin!]

51 >> Intellectual dishonesty FAIL.

Absolutely. I was completely intellectually honest.

For fuck's sake, the intellectually honest conservative argument against the GSEs for years was that their size and implied federal government guarantee so distorted the market that it wasn't really a "market-based" solution at all.

Their defenders responded that they weren't really guaranteed by the government because shut up. Unfortunately, that implied guarantee became a real one and vindicated the critics several trillion dollars later.

Was it a different business model Newt endorsed in his "misson to Mars" statement? Or was he just as blind to the bad side of it as Tom Friedman in a Chinese railway station?

52 Look, Newt is the frontrunner for all of 2 seconds, and he is already claiming his nomination is inevitable. Think about it. The guy is an even bigger narcissist than Obama.

53
My hope against hope is that first we get a repub prez and that repub prez winds up fred and fannie and totally gets rid of them.

You may call me a dreamer.  Go ahead.  I already know.

54 They were NEVER subsidized by tax dollars

Well, never subsidized by tax dollars until they were actually subsidized by tax dollars.  Never is a long, long time, Rockmom.

And the problems with Fannie and Freddie were inherent in the public/private partnership from the beginning.  Yes, it is that "implicit guarantee."  It's the fact that (at least as far back as 2004, remember, and I'm betting there were people before that) it was realized that any failure of Fannie or Freddy WOULD be subsidized by the tax-payer.  The fact it hadn't happened yet did not mean it wouldn't, let alone couldn't, happen in the future.

And the fact that other people, ostensibly Conservative, bought into it does not in any way make it less of a bad idea.  Good people fall for bad ideas all the time.  It makes them no less good, but it makes the ideas no less bad, either.

55 Take for example, his history of cheating on his wives. An honest person would free themselves of their marital encumbrance before engaging in a new relationship. .....But Newt chose to secure new relationships before he shed his old ones. ....This should tell us something about the man's core belief system. Look. If you know the milk in the fridge is expired, you don't drive home first, throw out the old milk, get back in the car and drive to the store to get fresh milk. You stop on the way home, pick up some fresh milk, bring it home, and toss out the expired milk. And then you pound that fresh milk down like you're John Henry racing a steam drill.

56 rockmom seems to have a good handle on this stuff and seems to have been there when it all went down, I suggest we read her replies any time we get a "Newt and Fredddie/Fannie" post.

57 To Ace and the other supporters of / apologists for Gingrich:

"Since I never foresaw the collapse (and few did; some, but only a few) I guess I can't fault Gingrich too much for having missed it."

Translation: I'm a complete screaming fuckwit, so the best thing we can do is elect someone just as much as a complete screaming fuckwit as I am.

Guess what, fuckwit. I foresaw the collapse. I'm hardly unique or special in this case. Lots of other people foresaw it. Newt Gingrich was not one of them. And contrary to your fuckwit notions of "maybe he was really telling them they sucked for the $1.5M or $1.8M or whatever they paid him," I present to you Newt Gingrich on GSEs (Freddie and Fannie), in 2007:

"Certainly there is a lot of debate today about the housing GSEs [Government Supported Enterprises -- in this case, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac], but I think it is telling that there is strong bipartisan support for maintaining the GSE model in housing. There is not much support for the idea of removing the GSE charters from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. And I think itÂ’s clear why. The housing GSEs have made an important contribution to homeownership and the housing finance system. We have a much more liquid and stable housing finance system than we would have without the GSEs. And making homeownership more accessible and affordable is a policy goal I believe conservatives should embrace. Millions of people have entered the middle class through building wealth in their homes, and there is a lot of evidence that homeownership contributes to stable families and communities. These are results I think conservatives should embrace and want to extend as widely as possible. So while we need to improve the regulation of the GSEs, I would be very cautious about fundamentally changing their role or the model itself."

Link: http://tinyurl.com/bnjja9l

That is Newt Fuckwit Gingrich, in his own fuckwit words. One year before the collapse. I'm sorry you fuckwits are so fuckwitted as to not see the massive fucking problem of expecting someone who lacks any clue about the economy to fix the economy. I guess it's a fuckwit thing. And as long as you fuckwits keep voting - or worse - encouraging other people to vote for your fuckwit candidates, we're all going to stay fucked.

So please shut the fuck up and stop fucking voting, you fucking fucks.

58 @55 All of the sudden I'm craving some cold 2%. And some scamper.

59

Gingrich isn't brave enough to want to over fix Medicare either.

Oh but he's the true conservative!

60

"half-privatizing some government function"

"Never start any vast projects with half vast ideas." - anon.

61 In 2005-2007 I worked with a guy in his 20s like myself. As a university student with a full time job making around $30k/yr he was able to buy 2 homes within 12 months, each new construction for about $160-185k. I can say for sure that when I saw *that*, I knew what was coming down the road.

62

AllenG - it is not as simple as you think.  The fact is that the only reason there is such a thing as a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage was because it was invented by the government in the 1930s, as a way to prevent future Depressions and massive foreclosures such as happened in the 1930s when everyone had 5 year loans with balloon payments. 

Laws enacted dutring the Depression also set up the savings and loan system, with a set of regional, government-owned Federal Home Loan Banks that advanced them money.  So far I have never heard of a conservative suggesting that we throw all of this out.

A fun fact that I'll bet almost nobody here knows, is that Texas - yes, super-conservative Texas - largely avoided the housing boom and bust of the last decade.  Why?  because until 2000, you could not get a home equity loan in Texas.  You still cannot get one that brings you up to a 100% loan to value.  This is a HUGE reason why Texas has that great economy and has created all those jobs that make Rick Perry look so good.  This was put in the state Constitution, and it took a Constitutional amendment and a referendum to modify it.

63 Link: http://tinyurl.com/bnjja9l

That is Newt Fuckwit Gingrich, in his own fuckwit words. One year before the collapse. I'm sorry you fuckwits are so fuckwitted as to not see the massive fucking problem of expecting someone who lacks any clue about the economy to fix the economy. I guess it's a fuckwit thing. And as long as you fuckwits keep voting - or worse - encouraging other people to vote for your fuckwit candidates, we're all going to stay fucked.

So please shut the fuck up and stop fucking voting, you fucking fucks.

Posted by: EvilRedScandi at December 02, 2011 11:32 AM (M+Vm5)

Dude. You've got a stroke in your future.

64 We need to get our corrupt government out of the business of private business. Everthing the government touches, turns to a tax payer funded money hole.... where politicians walk off with millions and we get another tax hike. "for the children".

65 OT Side note:  Jawa Report has trumped Ace's proprietary dual-posting technology with a quadruple post!  Let the arms race begin!

heh.  The other day RedState had a double post.  Ace is quite the trail-wordthatcannotbesaidatHQbutisaChevySUV! 

66 Newt is a horrible person and should h e or saw the financial collapse. Everyone saw it coming, we can't consider someone a conservative if they ever looked twice at Fanny and Freddy. The only acceptable choice is Mitt Romney.

67 ok.....we all get it....newt is a slime....we knew it before he decided to run.....so newt or romney?  if that's the choice?

68 Seriously, "ChevySUV" is so banned that you can't even type "trailbl@zer" without triggering the spam warning.

69 Freddie is a tertiary, mostly trivial node in the system that brought down the economy in 08. But by all means keep believing it eclipses the insane corruption of unregulated derivatives emanating from Wall Street. And remember we're in Afghanistan for the freedom, not the opium.

70

“So please shut the fuck up and stop fucking voting, you fucking fucks.”

Posted by: EvilRedScandi at December 02, 2011 11:32 AM (M+Vm5)

 

YouÂ’ve got a way with words.  Are you a Palin supporter by chance?

71 Are you encouraging people to buy things they have no way of being able to afford over the long run?

Maybe you're right.  Maybe I should have said "enable."  I believe government should not interfere with home ownership, and should make at easy as possible from a regulation and taxation standpoint.  It should not "step in" to make it artificially easier for some (through subsidized loans).

I also believe people should also be encouraged/enabled (pick your word) to be charitable, to be patriotic, and to be thrifty and sober.  At no point do I think the Government should step in to force any of those things, or to interfere in them.  But I do think the government should be such that those things are enabled.  That they're made easier, with less government interference.

72

#57 I call bullshit.  You foresaw the collapse of Fannie Mae when it was trading at $72 a share?  Congratulations, you are pretty much the only person in America who did.  Because the fact is they were LYING to everyone, including their own lobbyists and even to their customers, about what they were doing.  And if somehow Countrywide had survived, Fannie Mae would have too.

 

73 And remember we're in Afghanistan for the freedom, not the opium.

Posted by: Malaclypse the Elder at December 02, 2011 11:35 AM (tJa5V)

To borrow a phrase, stop being a fuckwit.

74 Posted by: phoenixgirl on other work computer ready to drink the perry flavor-aid

Out of those two, I'd vote for Newt.  At least he has beaten Democrats on the national stage before -- Mitt hasn't even tried.  We'd probably get one or two big victories out of Newt and a lot of pablum other than that.  But it seems to me that the same argument Mitt supporters use to try to convince us that a conservative Congress would rein in Mitt's liberal tendencies also apply to Newt.

But I am still voting for Perry unless he drops out. 

75 Forget everything. With unemployment dropping, Obama will sail into office with a monstrous mandate. It doesn't matter who we run against him.

76 With Newt's ego he will destroy himself in short order now that he is the front runner.

77 SCoaMF is on television watching a tennis match again........

78 @76 It has already started.

79 With Newt's ego he will destroy himself in short order now that he is the front runner.

Probably.
Good television entertainment, though!

80 78 I know.Those of us who have forgotten why we wrote off Newt will soon remember.

81 And don't forget , Newt is a gun control advocate.

82 Mitt or Newt? I guess I'd go with Mitt just because I think he is more electable than Gingrich. Kind of like having to choose between shit or shinola for dinner.

83 >>>>With Newt's ego he will destroy himself in short order now that he is the front runner.

I wouldn't count on it. Ego is as likely to propel Newt to victory as cause him to destroy himself. He's obviously got some kind of measure of self-control now that he's old and catholic.

84

What Fannie and Freddie did was basically throw gasoline on the fire that was started by the subprime loan boom.  They freaked out when they started losing market share to all the Wall Street private securitizations.  So they started buying the crap loans too.  They lied about how much crap they were buying and they abrogated their own lending standards for favored lenders like Countrywide.  Fannie had an exclusive deal with Countrywide, whose book of loans now has a default rate of almost 30%. 

85 A fun fact that I'll bet almost nobody here knows, is that Texas - yes, super-conservative Texas - largely avoided the housing boom and bust of the last decade.

They should know that.  I and other Texans have been trumpeting it for a while.  You know the flip side of that coin?  You couldn't (until 2000) be evicted from your house, either.  Once you bought a house, it was yours by homestead right.  If you couldn't make your mortgage payment, they could take all your stuff, but they couldn't take your house.  The compromise there was you couldn't borrow the full value of the home, and you couldn't borrow against the equity on the home, either.

I'm not sure how a State's position on contracts valid within its own borders has anything to do with the wisdom of establishing an entity which, by its very composition, is immune to market forces.

You point out the 30-year mortgage was invented in the 30's.  As part of the New Deal.  Which was the most socialist program in US History (at the time).  How does that make it Conservative?  I'll point out, in fact, that I don't think the Federal Government should have had any say in how mortgages were written- whether for terms of 5 years, or 50.  That kind of thing should have been left to the States.

86 @83 Measure of self-control? Ha, Newt just crowned himself the nominee.

87

55....Look. If you know the milk in the fridge is expired, you don't drive home first, throw out the old milk, get back in the car and drive to the store to get fresh milk. You stop on the way home, pick up some fresh milk, bring it home, and toss out the expired milk. 

EOJ, are you being facetious here? Sorry, I can't tell. 

If not, then did you warn your wife that she has an 'expiration date' before you married her? ....If so, then your analogy is valid. ....Does that mean that you have an expiration date too?

My husband would be surprised to learn that he has an expiration date.

88 He's obviously got some kind of measure of self-control now that he's old and catholic.

He's old.
He sat on a couch with a Catholic.

89 So, Ace, big question:

The defense you've just offered of Gingrich here (which is, I will grant, a well-reasoned one) is extremely long, nuanced, and reliant upon several critical subtle distinctions.

Do you think there is even the slightest chance in hell that it's one that could successfully be made to the public?  As opposed to True Believers like us who are of course looking for any reason to dismiss this stuff anyway...but as I keep reminding folks, our opinion doesn't matter worth shit.  We're *already* on-board the Anybody-But-Obama train.  We'd vote for a developmentally-stunted opossum over Obama.  And we comprise *maybe* 35% of the general electorate.

What the general public is going to hear from Obama is "Newt was taking millions of dollars from the very entities which helped destroy the American economy and he was shilling for them, despite the fact that he now says these people should be in jail.  Look, here's a interview which proves it!" (Now the interview makes a much different claim, as you point out -- good luck explaining that to most folks.) 

Yeah.

90 52 Look, Newt is the frontrunner for all of 2 seconds, and he is already claiming his nomination is inevitable. Think about it. The guy is an even bigger narcissist than Obama.

And to think I actually felt sorry for him back in June. They sent out an email that asked would I like to still be on the sending list? I said yes, you poor, poor bastard.

Ugh.

91
Oh my, Oh my, Oh my.  All of the repub candidates are liberals and did something wrong!  Oh my.

92 88 He's old. He sat on a couch with a Catholic.

Really? How do you know the sofa was Catholic?

93 Write a major blog about GSEs and setting expert hobo traps. Ace is a polymath:

http://tinyurl.com/bncnnum

94 >>>Ha, Newt just crowned himself the nominee.


And? Most winners believe they can win. Besides a said he has some sort of measure not "he's out of ego."

95 >>>I wouldn't count on it. Ego is as likely to propel Newt to victory as cause him to destroy himself. He's obviously got some kind of measure of self-control now that he's old and catholic.

What makes you think he's *really* Catholic?  Everything about his conversion suggests that it was done purely for purposes of satisfying his wife.

And do note that we're talking about a person who just proclaimed himself the winner of the primaries before a single vote has been cast.  And who, two weeks ago, graciously averred that when he began teaching online college courses from the White House as President, that he might make them available for free.

Yeah, this guy doesn't have a megalomaniacal bone in his body.

96 You know whose government didn't fuck this up? Canada's

Of course, if they had hired Newt as a consultant ...

97
We will win the Super Bowl.

98 newt....part of the problem....now part of the solution....?

99 92 88 He's old. He sat on a couch with a Catholic.

Really? How do you know the sofa was Catholic?

Posted by: Clutch Cargo at December 02, 2011 11:47 AM (Qxdfp)

There's a prayer card stuck between the cushions...

100 >>>And? Most winners believe they can win. Besides a said he has some sort of measure not "he's out of ego."

Yes, but most politicians don't go around publicly crowning themselves the winner in a hotly contested, wildly swinging Presidential race before a single vote has even been cast.  Especially when they've enjoyed their "leading" position for only two weeks and they're carrying around more baggage than a U.S. Airways ground crew.

Perhaps you should investigate the meaning of the word "hubris."

101 Proving that Republicans can and will go full retard.

102 97
We will win the Super Bowl.

Posted by: Joe "Newt" Namath at December 02, 2011 11:49 AM (JYheX)

And then shave our legs and wear pantyhose...

103 Nancy Pelosi is a laudable voice of responsible governance.

104

AllenG, I never said it was conservative.  I am saying that what many modern conservatives would call the free market for home loans is actually a market that was constructed wholly by the government through the FHA.  And it worked really, really well for a very long time, until some liberal do-gooders like Jimmy Carter decided that poor people should be able to own homes that they couldn't really afford, and that banks had a legal responsibility to lend to them or they would be shut down for discrimination.

And let's not forget that the whole savings and loan debacle was cleaned up by the government, at a cost of a then-staggering $92 billion, all of which happened under a Republican president.  But they did a really good job of disposing of all the assets in an ordelry fashion.  It's a shame we could not have used the same model this time around instead of just throwing $7 trillion at the morons at JPMorgan and Bank of Anerica and Citigroup.

There is a pretty good argument that every time Congress has deregulated the banks, within 10 years the banking sector has imploded.

105 4 Lean Six Sigma. It's all about Lean Six Sigma.
_______

Sizeist!

106 DAMN YOU RICK PERRY!!!!

107 Sorry, I can't say that any GSE's are good. If  I, as a taxpayer, am going to be hit when a GSE loses money, then I damn sure want to be rewarded if a GSE makes money.

A GSE is half-assed crockery. Something is a legitimate function of the government, or it is not. If it is, then government should do it, if it isn't then the government shouldn't be involved.

108 >>>It would be nice to discuss our opponent's faults once in a while.

Newt IS our opponent.  The fact that some of you fail to realize that, and mistake him for a friend, is one of the ongoing tragedies of this primary season and perhaps the final, poisoned fruit of the Tea Party movement.

109
afternoon, homos

oops, I mean faith in government, comrades

110

Not that IÂ’m advocating or even defending government interference and manipulation of what should be totally private sector financial affairs, but the unintentional effects of the housing bubble and loose mortgage money did have some positive effects.

 

The wealth effect and the ability to obtain financing without documentation on ever-increasing home values spurred many individuals to create small businesses with the funds available.  This in turn created jobs and fed the economy until the bottom fell out.  It just goes to show that no matter how much the government tries to fuck things up, the private sector will find a ray of sunshine.  Had the government stayed out of the way during the collapse, the banks and bondholders would have found a way to restructure all the debt in such a way that individuals would have benefited from.

111 EOJ, are you being facetious here? Sorry, I can't tell. Of course. A few people here might know that my first marriage ended because of my wife's infidelity while I was overseas defending your right to drink Pepsi in your choice of can or bottle.* I would never put anyone through that. I may be a jerk, but I am a loyal jerk. I cannot be tempted with strange pooter. Even while drunk. But somebody has to keep up appearances around here. *Clay Harvey. Get his books. Now.

112 104 Nancy Pelosi is a laudable voice of responsible governance.

Posted by: Newt Gingrich at December 02, 2011 11:51 AM (tJa5V)

And she tastes like chicken!

113 If there is a fuckwit demographic, I wonder what percentage of the populous it represents.  Any ideas?  Fuckwits need pandering too.

114 Ah, the fine stench of campaign season, when Morons let the hyperbole fly, and inevitability of catastrophe comes from every direction. When every iota and twitch of every candidate is the harbinger of disaster,  every conflicting opinion is dangerous lunacy, and every wild-eyed assertion and prognostication is unvarnished, unalterable destiny.

Some of you people need to make signboards and stand on streetcorners screaming at people.

115 We will win the Super Bowl.

Posted by: Joe "Newt" Namath at December 02, 2011 11:49 AM (JYheX)

And then shave our legs and wear pantyhose...

Posted by: Joe "Haines" Namath at December 02, 2011 11:51 AM (136wp)

And nail every prom queen, every stewardess, every model/actress in every city in the league.  It's good to be a winner!

116 Actually, I am an idiot.  I have 2/3rds equity in my home.  That means I didn't over-leverage, which means I'm not getting bailed out.  Fool.

117
George Will was on with Laura Ingrahamcrackers this morning.

G-Will was quite harsh on Knüte.


(I'm not a fan of Mr Will, but George Will > Bill Kristol)

118 What the general public is going to hear from Obama is "Newt was taking millions of dollars from the very entities which helped destroy the American economy and he was shilling for them, despite the fact that he now says these people should be in jail.  Look, here's a interview which proves it!" (Now the interview makes a much different claim, as you point out -- good luck explaining that to most folks.) 

Yeah.

Posted by: Jeff B. at December 02, 2011 11:45 AM (K+pvw)

I will run around Times Square naked the day any Democrat makes the argument that Fannie and Freddie helped destroy the economy.  Have you forgotten that Senator Barack Obama was the third largest recipient of campaign donations from Fannie Mae executives?  Do you know that his Administration has done precisely NOTHING to fix these companies and they are still bleeding the taxpayers?

Oh, but Newt was one of 4,000 consultants they hired.  The Horror!!!11!1!1!!

119

52
Look, Newt is the frontrunner for all of 2 seconds, and he is already claiming his nomination is inevitable.

He's just doing some simple process of elimination. There were 7 Not Romneys, subtract Bachman, Perry, Cain and you are left with Paul, Santorum and Huntsman. Voting begins in 4 weeks and 2 of which people will be doing holiday stuff, not politics. So all he has to do is not screw up too badly for 2 weeks and he's in.

120 116 Some of you people need to make signboards and stand on streetcorners screaming at people.

Sounds tantamount to work. I'll wait until they send me my sign before I think about it.

Can I have that thesaurus when you're done with it?

121

52
Look, Newt is the frontrunner for all of 2 seconds, and he is already claiming his nomination is inevitable.

He's just doing some simple process of elimination. There were 7 Not Romneys, subtract Bachman, Perry, Cain and you are left with Paul, Santorum and Huntsman. Voting begins in 4 weeks and 2 of which people will be doing holiday stuff, not politics. So all he has to do is not screw up too badly for 2 weeks and he's in.

Posted by: Schwalbe : The Me-262© at December 02, 2011 11:56 AM (UU0OF)

You forgot to carry the Won...

122 Daddy, daddy please....can we reopen Owshwitz and put all the republicant's there?  Please!  Please!  Please!  
 
Let me light the match!  Please!  Please!  Please!

123
Political shillery on a political blog's comment threads is like trying to sell ice to Eskimos.

Don't waste your time, folks.

124 Whoever put the amazon.com linky box back on the sidebar, thank you.  I just ordered a hand held wand scanner. 

125 @120 And there's the rub. All Newt has to do "is not screw up too badly." Good luck with that.

126 105 So why wasn't the same modeled used? It worked before why couldn't it been tried again?

127

Re Fannie and Freddie, read Reckless Endangerment, by Morgenson and Rosner (the former an NYT reporter, for cryin' out loud!). It details the complicity of Frank, Dodd, and the Democrat Party generally in creating the financial meltdown by protecting Fannie and Freddie ("affordable housing," anyone?).

As one commenter on Amazon wrote, the book reads like a Republican hit piece (which it does), but the fact that one of the authors is associated with the NYT helps to blunt that charge, and may help induce liberals to read the damned thing.

128 Even beyond how this would play to the general public (i.e. not good) I also l have the question that someone asked above, does Newt believe in Keynesianism, and/or does Newt believe in using government to fix big gov. problems? He keeps talking about a "fundamental transformation" of American politics" and I want to know what that means. If Newt wants to "transform" the government so it works "better" but still tries to do all the same things that the Fed govt does now, I'm not sure that I'm down with that. I don't want the Federal government "transformed" I just want it to be a whole lot smaller and to stop trying to do things that individuals and families are better off doing for themselves.

129 Perhaps, Newt should consult with former Enron consultant and Nobel Prize for Economics winner, Paul Krugman, to see how he managed to argue away any damage from a former employer who went “financially unstable.”

130 Senators write laws, private citizens write letters. Not only did Obama not do anything as a senator, he didn't even know what he was supposed to do if he ever got around to doing it. He still thought he was a "community organizer," writing letters to Da Man. He was too stupid to know that now he WAS Da Man.

131 How do I *know* he's really a Catholic? What kind of retarded and unanswerable question is that.

And Newt didn't "crown" himself the winner, he said, "I'm going to be the nominee."

Can you wrap you fanatical mind around the difference?  You see it's like a boxer. The boxer says, "I'm going to win this fight"  he doesn't say, "I already won it."

132

112....Thanks for the reply, EOJ.

And thank you for your service. ....Sorry to hear your ex did that to you. It's especially disgusting to me when I hear of women doing that to our men who are overseas.

133 "Newt IS our opponent.  The fact that some of you fail to realize that, and mistake him for a friend, is one of the ongoing tragedies of this primary season and perhaps the final, poisoned fruit of the Tea Party movement." Oh so now the tea party sucks? Jeez wtf did Greg the wonderRepublican copy your name?

134 What makes you think he's *really* Catholic? 
-----
I thought the candidates' religions were off the table. 

135 I'm telling you, if Newt get's elected prepare for Hillary in 2016. It's that simple.

136 I just ordered a hand held wand scanner.  Uh-huh. They used to be called "personal massagers."

137 125 Whoever put the amazon.com linky box back on the sidebar, thank you.  I just ordered a hand held wand scanner. 

Posted by: mpfs at December 02, 2011 11:59 AM (iYbLN)

Did you happen to find the vibrating alarm clock?  It would...uh....be perfect for m.....someone I know.

138 There is a pretty good argument that every time Congress has deregulated the banks, within 10 years the banking sector has imploded.

Yeah.  Funny how it worked out for all those centuries without any government intervention at all.

The problem isn't the banking industry, it's the changing of the rules.  And "the banking" sector has not imploded, businesses set upon a (now flawed) business model have imploded.

I'm not denying that it's happened (I only vaguely remember the S&L mess, but I do remember my dad {a former FDIC Inspector} getting what I now realize was a schadenfreude-fueled chuckle from it).  I'm pointing out that our base assumptions are that the Federal Government should be involved at all- and I reject that premise.  Let the states handle contracts within their own borders.  The ones that do well will attract more business and be more successful.

139 Again I say,damn you Rick Perry.If you prepared yourself and fucking stayed awake we wouldn't be stuck with 2 douches going by the monikers Mitt and Newt!

140

was it ed rollins on fnc this morning who said newt is going to screw up a thousand times with his "thinking out loud"........

141 And there's the rub. All Newt has to do "is not screw up too badly." Good luck with that. You forget that Newt has been not screwing up for a couple months now. He slow played his hand and just needs to not commit an unforced error now.

142 @ 133, Thanks, but it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.

143 Newt, if elected president, which I highly doubt would happen, would give new meaning to the term "Imperial Presidency." The hubris, the ego, the narcissism, is revolting.

144 i'm still drinking the perry flavor aid...

145

Posted by: nickless will probably get accidentally banned again soon at December 02, 2011 11:54 AM (MMC8r)

This was the best thing I've read in quite some time. Genius, really.

146

Posted by: mpfs  "...I just ordered a hand held wand scanner."

Mind if I ask what for? I've recently been looking at all sorts of prospecting/rock collecting tools and they have "wand scanners" that are basically pinpoint metal detectors rather than "Security" devices. So are you a treasure hunter or a bouncer at a honky tonk?  

147
Newt is still rated a Sell.

Pros: Newt is intelligent, articulate, cheery, and confident.

Cons: He will not connect with the average joe and average jane. Newt looks like a and sounds like a typical politician.

People will look at Newt and the impression they'll get is Out-of-touch. They will not feel like Newt identifies with them and their daily lives and problems.

Sell Newt.

148 If Norman Rockwell had appeared as a character on The Flintstones, what would his name have been?

149 You forget that Newt has been not screwing up for a couple months now Rightwing social engineering and splurges at Tiffanys notwithstanding...

150 @143 So just because Newt's been a good boy for 2 months I'm supposed to forget all the other monumental fuckups he's committed over the years? And, most importantly, Newt is still Newt.

151 148

I meant to scan documents and photos.

152

#127 Because Hank Paulson didn't have the balls to declare that Citigroup was insolvent and needed to declare bankruptcy.  He freaked out after the reaction to the Lehman Bros. bankruptcy.  Also, these big banks had assets all over the world, which would have made it pretty damn messy to unwind them and sell everything off.  With the S&Ls, the assets were mostly actual real estate. With the megabanks the assets are loans, bonds, derivatives.

But a friend of mine who is a whiz with a major bank laid out a plan for me in 2008 under which it would have made sense to have another Resolution Trust-type entity created to take over these banks and sell them off piece by piece.  This was before the Big Meltdown though.  But plenty of bankers knew this was coming, they just all thought they could didge the falling knife and it would hit someone else.

The RTC legislation really was a masterpiece, and there were some extremely dedicated and smart people put in charge of the agency.  I'm not sure the most recent Congress was capable of writing anything as sophisticated, or that we couldhave found the right people to run it without a lot of corruption and incompetence.

Neither government nor the private sector are what they used to be.

153 >>>I will run around Times Square naked the day any Democrat makes the argument that Fannie and Freddie helped destroy the economy.

I hope you've gotten yourself down to fighting weight then, my friend.  Do you think for even a moment that Obama will fail to use this arrow in his quiver if he needs it?  As Ace pointed out, Obama can point to his own "warning letter" (which of course is really a bunch of bullshit, but it serves his purpose politically) as proof that HE was on the right side and Newt was on the wrong side.  Or he can export the attack to an independent 501(c)(3) advocacy group with a name like "Citizens for Responsible Government" or some bullshit like that -- strip it of explicit "this is a Democratic ad" associations.  Or just get the MSM to hammer on it in article after article and endless commentary.

C'mon, you know how this is done, rockmom.  I think your discussion of Fannie and Freddie has been pretty much right-on in this entire thread (my brother worked as a senior underwriter with Fannie during that era, and dealt with all sorts of sub-prime loan issues, and our memory of this tracks with yours completely), but your failure to see how easily and how quickly Obama will turn this into a devastating general election issue is naive.  We can talk Solyndra and F&F all we want, but the sad truth is that in terms of political perception one thing Obama really does have going for him is that he's not seen as CORRUPT.  Gingrich will be easily painted that way.

154 Newt IS our opponent.

 I'm pretty sure you are our opponent.

155 Hey, now Newt's a racist because he said kids who grow up around people who don't work won't learn how to work. UNELECTABLE!!!!

156
I forgot one thing about Newt.

Another thing in Newt's favor is that he is qualified to be president.

But he ain't charming and doesn't possess the ability to personally connect with people.

157 137 I just ordered a hand held wand scanner. 

Uh-huh. They used to be called "personal massagers." Posted by: Empire of Jeff

EOJ
I have two of "those".

158 @157 That doesn't make him unelectable. He's going nowhere near the black vote anyway.

159

Posted by: Dave at December 02, 2011 12:06 PM (Xm1aB)

Nope, go support the millionaire, who told a group of unemployed Floridians that he is unemployed too.

160 How do I *know* Newt is really Catholic? What kind of retarded and unanswerable question is that?

And Newt didn't "crown" himself the winner. He said, "I'm going to be the nominee."

Can you wrap your fanatical mind around the difference? You see, it's like a boxer before the match. He says, "I'm going to win" not "I already one." The fact that you can't even bring yourself to not find evil in such a benign statement is telling.

161 159 Yowza.

162 I love the way the unemployment number dropped this morning to what, 8.6?  Only because over three hundred thousand people have given up looking for work. 

What a recovery!!

163

150 If Norman Rockwell had appeared as a character on The Flintstones, what would his name have been?

Norman-the-Chisel Rockwell?

164 Wasn't it just a few weeks ago that some were like, "Argh, Why can't we elect a smart candidate?" Like it or not: That's Newts bag, baby.

165 @160 Neither is Mitt.

166 >>>Oh so now the tea party sucks? Jeez wtf did Greg the wonderRepublican copy your name?

No, of course the Tea Party doesn't "suck."  But if you don't see the connection between the frantic search by Tea Party voters for "Not Romney," and the way that's transformed from a principle-based search for a guy who's more conservative into a mindless "if those guys in The Establishment are saying something then we must believe the opposite because They Are Always Evil And Wrong" impulse that's led these voters to choose a guy even MORE liberal and LESS trustworthy than Romney, then you're kidding yourself.

The Tea Party has done a lot of great things for conservatism, for the GOP, and for America.  But that doesn't mean that some of its animating impulses can't also bring forth poisoned fruit as well.  We do not live in a binary world you seem to contemplate.

167 KayInMaine, thank you for being an Honest Obama suppoter.

168

JeffB, I do not think you understand how much Fannie Mae is intertwined with the entire Democratic establishment in the U.S.  If Obama attacks them, then he is attacking Jim Johnson, and Frank Raines, and Rahm Emanuel who served on the board of Freddie, and Jamie Gorelick, and Bob Zoellick who is now the head of the World Bank, and on and on. 

And I'll bet you don't know who was Fannie Mae's TOP in-house lobbyist during all this time, do you?

Tom Donilon. Barack Obama's National Security Advisor. 

Wanna tell me again how Obama makes Newt Gingrich the villain here?

169 @161 Elize You know that Newt is also a millionare, right?

170 @168 Polling doesn't really jive with that meme when Mitt and Newt are polling neck and neck in polls where few respondents refer to themselves at members of the Tea Party. If it was just the Tea Party that was being skeptical about Mitt, he would have higher percentages.

171

when the emplyment numbers drop like this, I always wonder, if those that were supposed to recieve benifits didn't become of some error . i know a year or so ago, when my spouse was on unemplyment they kept making an error.

then they would say woops it was an error, we'll send bennies next week.

172 Good guess.  But his name would be Sheldon Firestein.

173 Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a news conference last week and told reporters this: During her weekly press conference on April 15, a reporter asked Pelosi a seemingly innocuous question about taxes. Pelosi prefaced her response with a fairly standard litany: explaining the dire state of the U.S. economy inherited by President Obama and setting the blame at the foot of the Bush administration. But she also added this: “When [then-Senator Obama] accepted the nomination in Colorado, the [Bush] Administration had kept from the public the idea that, in a matter of weeks, the financial community would be in crisis, and we would need to pass the TARP legislation.” The state-run media is trying to make something of this latest Pelosi fabrication today. But, what Speaker Pelosi failed to mention was that President Bush warned the Democratic Congress 17 times in 2008 alone about the systemic consequences of financial turmoil at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and also put forward thoughtful plans to reduce the risk that either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac would encounter such difficulties. Unfortunately, these warnings went unheeded, as the President’s repeated attempts to reform the supervision of these entities were thwarted by the legislative maneuvering of those who emphatically denied there were problems. The White House released this list of attempts by President Bush to reform Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac since he took office in 2001. Unfortunately, Congress did not act on the president’s warnings: ** 2001 April: The Administration’s FY02 budget declares that the size of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is “a potential problem,” because “financial trouble of a large GSE could cause strong repercussions in financial markets, affecting Federally insured entities and economic activity.” ** 2002 May: The President calls for the disclosure and corporate governance principles contained in his 10-point plan for corporate responsibility to apply to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (OMB Prompt Letter to OFHEO, 5/29/02) ** 2003 January: Freddie Mac announces it has to restate financial results for the previous three years. February: The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) releases a report explaining that “although investors perceive an implicit Federal guarantee of [GSE] obligations,” “the government has provided no explicit legal backing for them.” As a consequence, unexpected problems at a GSE could immediately spread into financial sectors beyond the housing market. (“Systemic Risk: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Role of OFHEO,” OFHEO Report, 2/4/03) September: Fannie Mae discloses SEC investigation and acknowledges OFHEO’s review found earnings manipulations. September: Treasury Secretary John Snow testifies before the House Financial Services Committee to recommend that Congress enact “legislation to create a new Federal agency to regulate and supervise the financial activities of our housing-related government sponsored enterprises” and set prudent and appropriate minimum capital adequacy requirements. October: Fannie Mae discloses $1.2 billion accounting error. November: Council of the Economic Advisers (CEA) Chairman Greg Mankiw explains that any “legislation to reform GSE regulation should empower the new regulator with sufficient strength and credibility to reduce systemic risk.” To reduce the potential for systemic instability, the regulator would have “broad authority to set both risk-based and minimum capital standards” and “receivership powers necessary to wind down the affairs of a troubled GSE.” (N. Gregory Mankiw, Remarks At The Conference Of State Bank Supervisors State Banking Summit And Leadership, 11/6/03) ** 2004 February: The President’s FY05 Budget again highlights the risk posed by the explosive growth of the GSEs and their low levels of required capital, and called for creation of a new, world-class regulator: “The Administration has determined that the safety and soundness regulators of the housing GSEs lack sufficient power and stature to meet their responsibilities, and therefore…should be replaced with a new strengthened regulator.” (2005 Budget Analytic Perspectives, pg. 83) February: CEA Chairman Mankiw cautions Congress to “not take [the financial market's] strength for granted.” Again, the call from the Administration was to reduce this risk by “ensuring that the housing GSEs are overseen by an effective regulator.” (N. Gregory Mankiw, Op-Ed, “Keeping Fannie And Freddie’s House In Order,” Financial Times, 2/24/04) June: Deputy Secretary of Treasury Samuel Bodman spotlights the risk posed by the GSEs and called for reform, saying “We do not have a world-class system of supervision of the housing government sponsored enterprises (GSEs), even though the importance of the housing financial system that the GSEs serve demands the best in supervision to ensure the long-term vitality of that system. Therefore, the Administration has called for a new, first class, regulatory supervisor for the three housing GSEs: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banking System.” (Samuel Bodman, House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Testimony, 6/16/04) ** 2005 April: Treasury Secretary John Snow repeats his call for GSE reform, saying “Events that have transpired since I testified before this Committee in 2003 reinforce concerns over the systemic risks posed by the GSEs and further highlight the need for real GSE reform to ensure that our housing finance system remains a strong and vibrant source of funding for expanding homeownership opportunities in America… Half-measures will only exacerbate the risks to our financial system.” (Secretary John W. Snow, “Testimony Before The U.S. House Financial Services Committee,” 4/13/05) ** 2007 July: Two Bear Stearns hedge funds invested in mortgage securities collapse. August: President Bush emphatically calls on Congress to pass a reform package for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying “first things first when it comes to those two institutions. Congress needs to get them reformed, get them streamlined, get them focused, and then I will consider other options.” (President George W. Bush, Press Conference, The White House, 8/9/07) September: RealtyTrac announces foreclosure filings up 243,000 in August – up 115 percent from the year before. September: Single-family existing home sales decreases 7.5 percent from the previous month – the lowest level in nine years. Median sale price of existing homes fell six percent from the year before. December: President Bush again warns Congress of the need to pass legislation reforming GSEs, saying “These institutions provide liquidity in the mortgage market that benefits millions of homeowners, and it is vital they operate safely and operate soundly. So I’ve called on Congress to pass legislation that strengthens independent regulation of the GSEs – and ensures they focus on their important housing mission. The GSE reform bill passed by the House earlier this year is a good start. But the Senate has not acted. And the United States Senate needs to pass this legislation soon.” (President George W. Bush, Discusses Housing, The White House, 12/6/07) ** 2008 January: Bank of America announces it will buy Countrywide. January: Citigroup announces mortgage portfolio lost $18.1 billion in value. February: Assistant Secretary David Nason reiterates the urgency of reforms, says “A new regulatory structure for the housing GSEs is essential if these entities are to continue to perform their public mission successfully.” (David Nason, Testimony On Reforming GSE Regulation, Senate Committee On Banking, Housing And Urban Affairs, 2/7/0 March: Bear Stearns announces it will sell itself to JPMorgan Chase. March: President Bush calls on Congress to take action and “move forward with reforms on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They need to continue to modernize the FHA, as well as allow State housing agencies to issue tax-free bonds to homeowners to refinance their mortgages.” (President George W. Bush, Remarks To The Economic Club Of New York, New York, NY, 3/14/0 April: President Bush urges Congress to pass the much needed legislation and “modernize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. [There are] constructive things Congress can do that will encourage the housing market to correct quickly by … helping people stay in their homes.” (President George W. Bush, Meeting With Cabinet, the White House, 4/14/0 May: President Bush issues several pleas to Congress to pass legislation reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the situation deteriorates further. “Americans are concerned about making their mortgage payments and keeping their homes. Yet Congress has failed to pass legislation I have repeatedly requested to modernize the Federal Housing Administration that will help more families stay in their homes, reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to ensure they focus on their housing mission, and allow State housing agencies to issue tax-free bonds to refinance sub-prime loans.” (President George W. Bush, Radio Address, 5/3/0 “he government ought to be helping creditworthy people stay in their homes. And one way we can do that – and Congress is making progress on this – is the reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That reform will come with a strong, independent regulator.” (President George W. Bush, Meeting With The Secretary Of The Treasury, the White House, 5/19/0 “Congress needs to pass legislation to modernize the Federal Housing Administration, reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to ensure they focus on their housing mission, and allow State housing agencies to issue tax-free bonds to refinance subprime loans.” (President George W. Bush, Radio Address, 5/31/0 June: As foreclosure rates continued to rise in the first quarter, the President once again asks Congress to take the necessary measures to address this challenge, saying “we need to pass legislation to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.” (President George W. Bush, Remarks At Swearing In Ceremony For Secretary Of Housing And Urban Development, Washington, D.C., 6/6/0 July: Congress heeds the President’s call for action and passes reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as it becomes clear that the institutions are failing. In 2005– Senator John McCain partnered with three other Senate Republicans to reform the government’s involvement in lending. Democrats blocked this reform,

174 The problems with Freddie and Fannie, and the trouble that will come when they are ended, stem from a very simple premise: they are cast by the Media as the saviors of the Little Guys, the minorities, the Poor, and any attempt at reform will be stymied by relentless left-wing propaganda about the "war on the Poor."

While we have the current Media we have, obsessed with proving Liberalism correct time and again (when it basically never is), these problems will not get solved.

175 154 Thanks for the insight it is extremely helpful and I am still trying to understand it all and who and what is involved for just my information. It helps judging politicians etc. I hear their are some very smart people that can unwind AIG as well but that did not happen either. I think the bright people are out there but not allowed to do what they can, not sure why just looking from the outside in.

176

Promoting home ownership: good. Lending to anyone who is breathing in order to get big ass bonuses: bad. Sic the OWS'ers on Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick and Rahm Emmanuel and everyone else who looted us.

Alinsky knew. Obama knows that Alinksy works. Newt gets it - the problem with Dodd-Frank is Dodd and Frank.

This. It's a classic case of unintended consequences. They meant well, they really did, but as in most big-governmental "solutions," the devil is in the details. There was nothing wrong with the Old Way of buying a home: you saved up the down payment (which was usually substantial, therefore proving your commitment), you bought your home and you could rely on a steady (but not champagne-cork-popping, except at your Mortgage Burning Party, remember those?) appreciation of its value over the years. Also, a family could count on a reasonable amount of job security (of which there is very little these days).

Now what those in power could have done to insure the stability of that little slice of the American Dream was to make sure that our economy was robust and thriving, where we had some upward mobility and the potential to buy a more expensive house one day. There is no doubt that that model worked well until it was interfered with by big-government addicts.

What those in power wound up doing was bypassing the traditional, capitalist, market-based, individual-incentive model in favor of direct intervention in the market, with the ususal disastrous results. It's this type of screwing around with capitalism that leads some people to claim that "capitalism is broken."

Well, duh. They were the ones who broke it.

They being us. We (actually, someone else other me and the Moron Horde) have voted for the exact wrong people like Frank, Dodd, and the ususal Libtard/Progressive gang of idiots for way too long. Until we get our collective heads out of our collective asses and understand the reality of things and how they work, we can look forward to more waste, decline and decay in our society.

177

>>>And I'll bet you don't know who was Fannie Mae's TOP in-house lobbyist during all this time, do you?

>>>Tom Donilon.

Oh, I'm well aware of all of this.  (I surely don't have the level of subject-matter expertise on Fannie & Freddie that you do -- I assume you worked in the industry or handled legislative issues relating to it? -- but I've been keeping my eye on them since 2006 or so, when my brother pointed out to me what an absolute disaster he was dealing with in the subprime market on a daily basis, and how it just kept getting more and more ridiculous.)

But I think you don't grasp that all of these people in the Democratic establishment will quietly put their heads down and accept a few lashes from the whip if it gets Obama reelected -- they know where The Greater Good and their personal interests lie.  If your argument is that an attack on Gingrich by Obama (or an 'independent' advocacy group) would merely shine a light on Dem involvement with Fannie and Freddie, I'm asking you again: have you forgotten how the media works?  The stories will be about the ads, about Gingrich's reaction, and process-based stuff where they'll MENTION that "Republicans have alleged hypocrisy in these attacks given Obama administration ties to Fannie and Freddie blah blah blah" without any actual investigation or heavy discussion of the merits.  That's a preordained outcome. 

"Fair" and "right" has got nothing to do with it.  I would have figured 2008 already taught us that.

178 @161 Elize

You know that Newt is also a millionare, right?

Posted by: Dave at December 02, 2011 12:14 PM (Xm1aB)

Sure and nothing wrong with that. But Newt didnt tell a bunch of Americans in tough economic circumstances, that he is just like them.

179 170 It is so so corrupt, it beyond corrupt. None of these people have gone to jail, that is just insane.

180 @mpfs
D'oh, that use never even occurred to me. Who knew that "wand scanner" was such an ambiguous term?

181

#175, it is even worse than that.  The legislation that actually set up a procedure for conservatirship of the GSEs only passed Congress because President Bush insisted it be attached to a foreclosure prevention bill.  It never would have passed otherwise.  Fan and Fred finally stood down and stopped lobbying against it when they saw the handwriting on the wall. 

#179 Yes, I was in the industry working with and against Fan and Fred in various roles through all of this time.  Newt Gingrich's contract was a drop in the ocean of money these companies were throwing around in DC.  I know it is theoretically possible to hype it to the point where it looks worse than it is, but he DID. NOT. LOBBY. for Freddie, and anything else is just eyewash.  Newt didn't help himself by bullshitting about it in the debate, but he certainly couldn't stand there and say the truth, which is that he did practically nothing for all that money, as did almost every consultant and lobbyist the GSEs retained.  That doesn't make him a  non-conservative, it makes him a guy who saw money being thrown around and went and got some.

182 I don't think anyone here is saying Newt is the TRUE CONSERVATIVE, so stop propping up that strawman every three seconds.

If I end up supporting Newt, it's only because the rest of the field is so weak they can't even put up a basic fight against Obama.

183

And I will reiterate, plenty of conservatives were convinced that the GSE model was a good one because they were essentially private companies fulfilling a public purpose. 

They went off the rails because their executives got really greedy and pushed for maximum earnings in order to give themselves gigantic bonuses, and they knew they could not keep doing that if they had any kind of decent regulation.  And then they panicked when they started losing market share to Wall Street, and started buying crap. 

A decent regulator would have ensured that the companies did not cook their books to maximize earnings per share, it would have stopped them from ever buying any subprime paper, it would have stopped them from amassing trillion-dollar portfolios that caused the systemic risk, AND it would have told Congress and HUD that they cannot keep ratcheting up the affordable housing goals of the GSEs without forcing them into crap lending. 

184 by: AllenG (Dedicated Tenther) says 'No' to RINO Romney

Do you know what mortgages were like before the New Deal gave us the 30-year mortgage?  The mortgagee took out a mortgage for X years, and for almost all of those X years, he paid only interest.  The principal all came at the end.  So, if he fell on hard times, and was faced with foreclosure, he had ZERO equity.  The Bank got everything, which gave them an excellent incentive to foreclose.  If you sold your house, you had to repay the bank the entire cost of the house, before you saw any profit.  Pre New Deal, taking out a mortgage was a lot like paying rent to the bank for years--you had no ownership unless you made it to the end of the mortgage.

I'll repeat Chesterton's explanation of the difference between a progressive and a conservative. There's an unused gate in the middle of a field.  The progressive tears it down right away.  The conservative finds out why it was put there in the first place before he makes a decision.  There are a lot of government agencies that have to be shut down, or changed--but let's think about why they were put there in the first place.  Some of them are pure garbage (the Department of Education comes to mind).  But some of them were created as answers to real problems in the free market. They may have been the wrong answers, but if we just hand the situation to the free market, there's every chance the original problems will pop up again.

Liberals often talk as if government were some kind of fairy godmother--just let her sprinkle her federal pixie dust over the problem, and it will disappear. It pains me to see conservatives making the identical mistake about the free market.

185

No mention from the media about Franklin Reins and Jamie Gorelick - both democrats - and how they walked away from Fannie and Freddie with millions upon millions.

 

186 Oh, and the banking sector DID NOT work for centuries without any government regulation. Western economies were all tightly regulated --by the feudal system, and then by mercantilism--until the late 18th , early 19th century, when some countries let go.  It was a great period of commercial expansion--but it was also a time of regular booms and busts, in which a great many people suffered.

187 Things really have changed. I know I have. Two years ago I would have been much more aggressive about claiming ending this or that program (like NPR) was "unrealistic" and politically poisonous, and I would have counseled people to not overreach and set the cause back by demanding too much. As I read this I was thinking stuff like "Well, I was talking about this in 2007 and earlier!" Then I looked at my emails to Ace. Never mentioned it! Funny how you edit your memories to make you look smarter.

188 Ya but George Bush mentioned it. What a dummy.

189 July: Two Bear Stearns hedge funds invested in mortgage securities collapse. August: President Bush emphatically calls on Congress to pass a reform package for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying “first things first when it comes to those two institutions. Congress needs to get them reformed, get them streamlined, get them focused, and then I will consider other options.” (President George W. Bush, Press Conference, The White House, 8/9/07) September: RealtyTrac announces foreclosure filings up 243,000 in August – up 115 percent from the year before. September: Single-family existing home sales decreases 7.5 percent from the previous month – the lowest level in nine years. Median sale price of existing homes fell six percent from the year before. December: President Bush again warns Congress of the need to pass legislation reforming GSEs, saying “These institutions provide liquidity in the mortgage market that benefits millions of homeowners, and it is vital they operate safely and operate soundly. So I’ve called on Congress to pass legislation that strengthens independent regulation of the GSEs – and ensures they focus on their important housing mission. The GSE reform bill passed by the House earlier this year is a good start. But the Senate has not acted. And the United States Senate needs to pass this legislation soon.” (President George W. Bush, Discusses Housing, The White House, 12/6/07) *Borrowed from the poster up thread-tinyurlsuck

190 Rockmom--Please keep writing. Your insider view of what happened is truly valuable, and I wish more people would pay close attention to it.

191

LOL, even a funnier thread than usual.

You've got Gingrich bots who couldn't figure out what a disaster that candidacy would be in a November general election if you sat down and explained it to them using Hooked on Phonics.

You've got "single issue" types who don't know the difference between a subprime mortgage and a subdural hematoma.

You've got pragmatic conservatives trying to explain political reality to brick walls; it's like watching Don Quixote going after a jet plane with a toothpick.

You've got Palin / Cain bots who simply are confused and don't know what to think.

Ah, yes, the post "Tea Party" Republican primary base.  The greatest gift of our lifetime. 

Stay classy, conservatives.  See you at Barack's 2nd inauguration party. 

192 Another schism at the root of this is the leftist requirement for equality of results rather than equality of opportunity.

There is nothing wrong with the government encouraging behavior deemed favorable for the nation. But that is a very different thing from intervention to outright procure the desired result.

Offering pamphlets out of the office in Pueblo, CO to tell people stuff like babies do better if regularly fed as opposed to being starved. Obvious perhaps but some people need to be told remarkably obvious stuff. The printing and distribution of these pamphlets is fairly cheap. Likewise for encouraging home ownership with a pamphlet explaining how to establish good credit.

Changing the rules to make things easier for those who won't read the pamphlet is not encouragement. It's intervention. It's where the line is crossed. Government intervention is supposed to be confined to those situations where one citizen's civil rights are in danger from somebody, citizen or otherwise. It's just like your mother told you: Keep your hands to yourself.

Most of our problems come from a simple failure to remember that rule. Leftists not only want to lead the horse to water, they want to make it drink and monitor its hydration level for the rest of its life, even if it means chaining the horse to the trough. After all, it's for the horse's own good. The horse is unlikely to see it that way but what does a common horse know compared to the finely honed bureaucratic skill of a born leftist?

193

Even the Bush Administration was not as pure as the driven snow on this.  Part of its efforts to get more regulation of Fan and Fred was driven by Fannie's blatant showering of money on Democrats and its naked power plays that pissed off a lot of Republicans.  Part was driven by lobbying by some of the big banks who were sick of Fan and Fred's strongarm market tactics and wanted a regulator to kick their asses.  Alan Greenspan wanted to be their regulator just to build his own empire.   Almost no one was really driven by a fear of a major fnancial meltdown being caused by Fan and Fred.

What was amazing was that even the accounting scandals in 2003 and 2004 did not really change anything in Congress, thought it made for some nice damning videos of Barney Frank and Maxine Waters drooling all over Frank Raines.  That should have been a rip roaring wake up call for everyone but it wasn't.

194

For years, President Bush and others, on several occasions, publicly warned of a collapse even going before Congress. Glenn Beck has a great article on it along with Bush's attempts to warn about them and a timeline, etc. 

http://tinyurl.com/4k9cme

Newt had to have known (and look further down my post and you'll see he says he did but touted them anyway screwing us, the taxpayers). 

Which he did as he states himself.

http://tinyurl.com/d652fcr

The video is there, as well.

More Newt: As a Professor of History I Knew Freddie Mac was Headed for Collapse (As I Accepted Cash to Publicly Defend Them)

Newt really has some explaining to do over this, because there is no getting around the fact that he leveraged his credibility to publicly defend Fannie Mac and the government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) model in general, at a time when he now claims it was “clear” to him that the market was headed for trouble. It would be bad enough if had done this as an independent commentator, but we now know he received over a million dollars in consulting fees for services he provided to Freddie Mac.

Either he knew Freddie MacÂ’s lending practices were contributing to an unsustainable housing bubble headed for collapse, as he now claims, and yet accepted money to publicly defend them anyway. On their web site. Or he is now stretching the truth about his assessment of Freddie MacÂ’s problems at the time, and the advice he privately gave to their management.

Neither of these scenarios are very good. And I want to make it clear, I am not anti-Newt. What I am is pro-victory in 2012 and as far as I am concerned all of these types of things need to be fully aired and addressed now.

195

Unearthed: Gingrich Makes the Case for GSEÂ’s on Freddie MacÂ’s Web Site in 2007/2008
http://tinyurl.com/82zpw2p

Here's a couple quotes from it but I'd read the rest too.

Gingrich: The housing GSEs have made an important contribution to homeownership and the housing finance system. We have a much more liquid and stable housing finance system than we would have without the GSEs.

Q. This is not a point of view one normally associates with conservatives.

Gingrich: Well, itÂ’s not a point of view libertarians would embrace. But I am more in the Alexander Hamilton-Teddy Roosevelt tradition of conservatism. I recognize that there are times when you need government to help spur private enterprise and economic development.

Then there's this:

Newt's quote above touts how great the GSEs are and how stable the housing finance market is because of them.  Now Newt is saying he changed his view after the collapse of Freddie Mac that he didn't know was coming except here's what he said earlier:

http://tinyurl.com/d652fcr

The video is there, as well.

More Newt: As a Professor of History I Knew Freddie Mac was Headed for Collapse (As I Accepted Cash to Publicly Defend Them)

196

175 Great Minds Think Alike. I just posted the link to that.

Thank you for posting the whole thing.

Newt HAD to have known of the collapse so therefore, he only thought of himself as he was obviously a god awful consultant, advocated them and got conservatives to go along and he took money to bilk the taxpayers  

He even stated he knew yet touted them publicly and to Congress Critters.

197 Thank you for the good writeup. It in fact was a amusement account it. Look advanced to more added agreeable from you! However, how could we communicate?

198 I hope you never stop!  This is one of the best blogs Ive ever read.  Youve got some mad skill here, man.  I just hope that you dont lose your style because youre definitely one of the coolest bloggers out there.  Please keep it up because the internet needs someone like you spreading the word.

199 IÂ’ve been looking everywhere for this! Thank goodness I found it on Bing.Thx

200
That is useful information and its quite easy to come a croper if you are not vigilant.

201 "He seems to mistake who exactly was preying on whom. He casts this in terms of the people taking out mortgages they couldn't afford, and often falsified their applications to secure, as the victims." And in this case, in spite of your braindead partisanship, he's not wrong. Offering a loan to someone in the full knowledge that there is not a chance in hell that they will be able to pay it back in full - and thus expecting that you get whatever payments they make PLUS the property when you foreclose, and in fact this being the intention all along - that is fraud. People are supposed to go to jail for that. Even if they vote Republican.