Today I received an email (from someone who will remain nameless) about three people associated with Fannie Mae that are now supposedly working as advisors to Barack Obama. (Imagine it is written in large text and in multiple colors, which is how I got it):
Obviously the point of this email is to show that Obama has some relations with people who were involved in the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapse.
Here is a quick look into THREE former Fannie Mae executives
who have helped bring down Wall Street, AND WHAT THEY ARE DOING
TODAY.
Franklin Raines was a Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Fannie
Mae. Raines was forced to retire from his position with Fannie Mae when auditing
discovered severe irregulaties in Fannie Mae's accounting activities. At the
time of his departure (Wednesday, Dec.22, 2004) The Wall Street Journal noted, 'Raines, who long defended the company's accounting despite mounting evidence
that it wasn't proper, issued a statement late Tuesday (Dec. 21, 2004) conceding
that 'mistakes were made' and saying he would assume responsibility as he
had earlier promised. News reports indicate the company was under growing
pressure from regulators to shake up its management in the wake of findings
that the company's books ran afoul of generally accepted accounting
principles for four years.' Fannie Mae had to reduce its surplus by $9
billion.
Raines left with a 'golden parachute' valued at $240 Million.
The government filed suit against Raines when the depth of the
accounting scandal became clear.
See: http://housingdoom.com/2006/12/18/fannie-charges/
The government noted, 'The 101 charges reveal how the individuals
improperly manipulated earnings to maximize their bonuses, while knowingly
neglecting accounting systems and internal controls, misapplying over twenty
accounting principles and misleading the regulator and the public. The notice
explains how they submitted six years of misleading and inaccurate accounting
statements and inaccurate capital reports that enabled them to grow Fannie
Mae in an unsafe and unsound manner.' These charges were made in 2006. The
Court ordered Raines to return $50 million dollars he received in bonuses
based on the miss-stated Fannie Mae profits.
Tim Howard was the Chief Financial Officer of Fannie Mae. Howard 'was a
strong internal proponent of using accounting strategies that would ensure a
'stable pattern of earnings' at Fannie. In everyday English - he was cooking the
books. The government investigation determined that, 'Chief Financial Officer,
Tim Howard, failed to provide adequate oversight to key control and reporting
functions within Fannie Mae,'
On June 16, 2006, Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., asked the Justice
Department to investigate his allegations that two former Fannie Mae executives
lied to Congress in October 2004 when they denied manipulating the
mortgage-finance giant's income statement to achieve management pay bonuses..
Investigations by federal regulators and the company's board of directors since
concluded that management did manipulate 1998 earnings to trigger bonuses.
Raines and Howard left Fannie Mae under pressure in December 2004. Raines's
departure was structured as an early retirement. Howard resigned.
Howard's 'Golden Parachute' was estimated at $20 Million!
Jim Johnson is a former executive at Lehman Brothers who was
later forced from his position as Fannie Mae CEO. A look at the Office of
Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's May 2006 report on mismanagement and
corruption inside Fannie Mae, and you'll see some interesting things about
Johnson. Investigators found that Fannie Mae had hidden a substantial
amount of Johnson's 1998 compensation from the public, reporting that it was
between $6 million and $7 million when it fact it was $21 million. Johnson
is currently under investigation for taking illegal loans from Countrywide
while serving as CEO of Fannie Mae.
Johnson's 'Golden Parachute' was estimated at $28 Million.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
FRANKLIN RAINES?
Raines works for the Obama Campaign as a Chief Economic
AdvisorTIM HOWARD?
Howard is also a Chief Economic Advisor to Obama
JIM JOHNSON?
Johnson was hired as a Senior Obama Finance Advisor
and was selected to run Obama's Vice Presidential Search
Committee
IF OBAMA PLANS ON CLEANING UP
THE MESS - HIS ADVISORS HAVE
THE EXPERTISE - THEY MADE
THE MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Would you trust the men who tore the 'old'
Wall Street down to build the New Wall
Street?
POSTSCRIPT:
And please pay attention to FOX NEWS in the next few days
and find out WHO the Senators were, in the Democratic Party,
that these three guys were working with.
You will love this.... It just gets better and better... IS THIS
CHANGE???
Guess what? I was easily able to debunk this by going to snopes.com. http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/fanniemae.asp
Here's what it says:
Origins: When one of the hottest issues of a presidential campaign is the meltdown of the mortgage lending industry and the collapse of the economy, a candidate's having economic advisors on his staff who are
strongly associated with the system and practices that helped create the current
mess likely wouldn't sit well with the public. That's the premise of this
above-quoted e-mail, which claims that three men formerly associated with the
Federal National Mortgage Association (commonly known as "Fannie Mae") are now
serving as "chief economic advisors" with the presidential campaign of Barack
Obama. However, although at least some of these men have had connections to the
Obama campaign at one time or another, none of them has ongoing roles with that
campaign as chief economic advisors.
Franklin Raines, who formerly headed the budget office for the Clinton administration, became the first black CEO of aFortune 500 company when he took over at Fannie Mae" in 1999. Raines, who had earned$20 million in salary and bonuses from Fannie Mae in 2003, resigned from his CEO position in 2004 after regulators determined that the company had violated accounting rules and created an illusory$9 billion in past profit.
Raines has had some dealings with the Obama campaign, but he never held any actual position within the campaign, and his involvement with it was not nearly as substantial as implied here. As the Washington Post reported when a McCain campaign commercial attempted to link Raines with the
Democratic candidate, the whole substance of the connection between the two men
was that Raines "had gotten a couple of calls from the Obama campaign" in which
they talked about "general housing and economy issues."
Franklin Raines' predecessor, James A. Johnson, (former chief of staff to Vice PresidentWalter F. Mondale), was CEO of Fannie Mae from 1991 to 1998. After Johnson left the company, regulators later discovered that Fannie Mae had engaged in fraudulent
accounting practices in 1998 which manipulated its earnings so that executives
could earn performance bonuses (up to$1.9 million in Johnson's
case) they would not otherwise have been entitled to.
In May 2008, Senator Obama tapped James Johnson to be one member of a three-person panel tasked with vetting potential vice-presidential running mates. Johnson (who was
not serving as an economic advisor to the Obama campaign) resigned from that
position a month later after news accounts surfaced that he had received more
than$2 million in home loans at below average market rates from
Countrywide Financial (a partner of Fannie Mae).
Tim Howard, the former CFO (chief financial officer) of Fannie Mae, was caught up in the same accounting scandal that undid Franklin Raines, and (like Raines) resigned from the company in 2004. We haven't yet found any substantive connection between Tim
Howard and the Obama campaign, however, much less any information supporting the
claim that Howard is (or was) a "Chief Economic Advisor to Obama."
I also found this on About.com: http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/barackobama/a/wall_street.htm
Here's what is says:
Comments: While the above litany of charges against former Fannie Mae executives Franklin Raines, Tim Howard, and Jim Johnson matches up pretty closely with what has been reported in legitimate news sources, it is not true that any of these gentlemen went on to serve as "chief economic adviser" or "senior financial adviser" to the Barack Obama campaign.
Franklin Raines - The Washington Post reported in July 2008 that Franklin Raines had "taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters." Though the unsourced statement was not questioned at the time, the Obama campaign later denied that Franklin Raines had advised the candidate in any capacity, and Raines himself issued a statement saying, "I am not an advisor to Barack Obama, nor have I provided his campaign with advice on housing or economic matters."
Whatever the case, "taking calls" on mortgage and housing questions from a presidential campaign does not constitute acting as a "chief economic adviser."
Tim Howard, former Fannie Mae Chief Financial Officer, has no evident connection to the Barack Obama campaign at all, let alone as a "chief economic adviser."
Jim Johnson, who was CEO of Fannie Mae between 1991 and 1998, is the only one of these three men to have a documented connection to the Obama campaign. He served briefly as a member of Obama's vice-presidential vetting committee before stepping down amid allegations that he received below-market-rate mortgage loans from Countrywide Bank, one of the institutions involved in the subprime mortgage crisis. So far as can be determined from published sources, at no time has Johnson acted as a "senior financial adviser"
to the campaign.
So this email was obviously sent to me to try to get me to go, "OH MY GOD! Look at Obama's associations! He's a terrible person! I can't vote for him!" But with the email being debunked by Snopes, I don't think I have to worry about that.
In any case, since we're talking about the candidates associates, let's take a look at who is working with John McCain, who his advisors are, and his campaign staff...
Let's start with Phil Gramm!
Phil Gramm - The crux of that email was that Obama is working with people who were at the heart of the economic collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That has been shown to not be true.
However, what IS true is that Phil Gramm is very close friends with John McCain and an economic advisor of his. He was the Senior Economic Advisor to McCain until July when he resigned after saying that America is not in a recession and that Americans are a bunch of whiners. Here's the quotes:
"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession." He
added, "We have sort of become a nation of whiners, you just hear this constant
whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in
decline." (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/09/mccain-adviser-addresses-mental-recession/)
These comments became a political issue for McCain and Gramm was forced to resign.
BUT!... regardless of this, ... why is the fact that Phil Gramm was McCain's Senior Economic Advisor and is still a very close friend of his? Because Phil Gramm is the GODFATHER OF THE ECONOMIC CRISIS WE ARE NOW IN!
Gramm was the king of deregulation. In 1999 he helped get passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which deregulated the financial industry and put us in the situation we are into today with the economy. He was very proud of this legislation.
And even though he's not officially a part of McCain's campaign, there's evidence that he's still involved.
- He called Ron Paul to try to get him to support McCain (Paul rejected him): http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/09/paul-rejects-gr.html
- He's attending campaign briefings: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/08/14/phil-gramm-attends-mccain-campaign-briefing/
- There's even talk that he might be considered to be McCain's Treasury Secretary: http://crooksandliars.com/2008/09/22/mccain-spokesman-refuses-to-say-gramm-wont-be-treasury-secretary/
Do we want the Godfather of our economic collapse to be our Treasury Secretary?!?!?!
So as opposed to the made up association between Obama and three Fannie Mae execs, here's a REAL association between McCain and someone directly responsible for our economic crisis.
Now that I've hit the worst person in McCain's brain trust, I'm going to keep the others a little shorter for time sake...
Rick Davis: He is McCain's campaign manager. From the New York Times:
"Senator John McCain’s campaign manager was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say." (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/us/politics/22mccain.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin)
Here's another article about it WITH VIDEO!: http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/09/24/on-davis-s-ties-to-freddie-mac-mccain-gets-boomeranged.aspxThis article says Davis's lobbying firm was paid by Freddie Mac until August of this year: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/us/politics/24davis.html?_r=2&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1222284238-V7i00WGuim4UgPJpSsdLDg
Wouldn't you say, if he was part of a group that lobbied for deregulation for Fannie and Freddie, that maybe he's part of the problem? A direct link for McCain to the financial crisis? Not exactly the type of person you want as part of your campaign, let alone your campaign manager?
But that's not all! No, no, no! That's not all!
According to the Washington Post, in 2006 Davis also setup a meeting between McCain and a Russian billionaire. Davis was working for a lobbying firm that Here's the first two paragraphs of that article:
"A top political adviser in Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign helped arrange an introduction in 2006 between McCain and a Russian billionaire whose suspected links to anti-democratic and organized-crime figures are so controversial that the U.S. government revoked his visa.
Rick Davis, who is now McCain's campaign manager, helped set up the encounter between McCain and Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska in Switzerland during an international economic conference. At the time, Davis was working for a lobbying firm and seeking to do business with the billionaire. " (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/01/25/ST2008012500226.html)
Those two key people in McCain's organization with rather shady pasts. PROVEN pasts, not made up.
Here's some more! These are not all about Freddie and Fannie, but are some guys that have lobbied for some bad things:
Charlie Black: McCain's campaign chairman, Moveon.org says "he once ran a lobbying firm that represented brutal dictators like Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire." (This is from a email from Moveon.org: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/05/13/moveon_targets_mccain_aides_lo.html... but I also found this link that gives you 10 things to know about Charlie Black: http://www.alternet.org/election08/89835/)
Thomas Loeffler: Loeffler had to resign from McCain's campaign in May due to his role as a Lobbyist. His clients included Saudi Arabia.
Peter Madigan: a leading McCain fundraiser, lobbies on behalf of the king of Dubai.
(Here's a fact sheet about Black, Loeffler, and Madigan: http://www.firethelobbyists.com/images/fire_the_lobbyists.pdf)
Here's an article from February all about the lobbyists that have worked for McCain: http://mediamatters.org/items/200802280001
Here's a WHOLE LIST of 133 lobbyists who have worked or are working for McCain: http://mccainsource.com/corruption?id=0006 (I wanted to paste the whole list here, but thought that was too much. You can click the link to see the whole list.)
Here's a list of 22 McCain staffers who have lobbied for Big Oil companies: http://mccainsource.com/corruption?id=0014
As you can see, there's plenty of evidence to show that the people who are working for and with and advising McCain are people to worry about more than those who are working and advising Obama. Especially when McCain says he's running against corruption, lobbying, and wants reform. How can you believe that stuff when you look at who his advisers are and who is running and working for his campaign? Can you imagine Phil Gramm, the architect of our financial collapes, being Treasury Secretary?
So while a lying email sends out fake information regarding Obama's ties that don't exist, I've just given you loads of true information that shows real connections for John McCain to lobbyists, corruption, and some people responsible for our current financial crisis.
How do you like that boomerrang? :D
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