Monday, January 19, 2009

The Financial Crisis



EVIDENCE FOUND!!! Clinton administration's "BANK AFFIRMATIVE ACTION" They forced banks to make BAD LOANS and ACORN and Obama's tie to all of it!!!















ECONOMIC COLAPSE DEMOCRATS TO BLAME NANCY PELOSI OBAMA subprime loans democrats to blame house speaker failed 29th of sept. DAYS OF AWE AND ACCOUNTABLITY stock market closes at 777 points down accorn














Obama says Sub Prime Mortgages that gave houses to people WHO COULDN'T AFFORD THEM was a GOOD IDEA!!














How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis: Kevin Hassett


Commentary by Kevin Hassett











Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- The financial crisis of the past year has provided a number of surprising twists and turns, and from Bear Stearns Cos. to American International Group Inc., ambiguity has been a big part of the story.



Why did Bear Stearns fail, and how does that relate to AIG? It all seems so complex.



But really, it isn't. Enough cards on this table have been turned over that the story is now clear. The economic history books will describe this episode in simple and understandable terms: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exploded, and many bystanders were injured in the blast, some fatally.



Fannie and Freddie did this by becoming a key enabler of the mortgage crisis. They fueled Wall Street's efforts to securitize subprime loans by becoming the primary customer of all AAA-rated subprime-mortgage pools. In addition, they held an enormous portfolio of mortgages themselves.



In the times that Fannie and Freddie couldn't make the market, they became the market. Over the years, it added up to an enormous obligation. As of last June, Fannie alone owned or guaranteed more than $388 billion in high-risk mortgage investments. Their large presence created an environment within which even mortgage-backed securities assembled by others could find a ready home.



The problem was that the trillions of dollars in play were only low-risk investments if real estate prices continued to rise. Once they began to fall, the entire house of cards came down with them.



Turning Point



Take away Fannie and Freddie, or regulate them more wisely, and it's hard to imagine how these highly liquid markets would ever have emerged. This whole mess would never have happened.



It is easy to identify the historical turning point that marked the beginning of the end.



Back in 2005, Fannie and Freddie were, after years of dominating Washington, on the ropes. They were enmeshed in accounting scandals that led to turnover at the top. At one telling moment in late 2004, captured in an article by my American Enterprise Institute colleague Peter Wallison, the Securities and Exchange Comiission's chief accountant told disgraced Fannie Mae chief Franklin Raines that Fannie's position on the relevant accounting issue was not even ``on the page'' of allowable interpretations.



Then legislative momentum emerged for an attempt to create a ``world-class regulator'' that would oversee the pair more like banks, imposing strict requirements on their ability to take excessive risks. Politicians who previously had associated themselves proudly with the two accounting miscreants were less eager to be associated with them. The time was ripe.



Greenspan's Warning



The clear gravity of the situation pushed the legislation forward. Some might say the current mess couldn't be foreseen, yet in 2005 Alan Greenspan told Congress how urgent it was for it to act in the clearest possible terms: If Fannie and Freddie ``continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road,'' he said. ``We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.''



What happened next was extraordinary. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets.



Different World



If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.



But the bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn't even get the Senate to vote on the matter.



That such a reckless political stand could have been taken by the Democrats was obscene even then. Wallison wrote at the time: ``It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit. The Democrats and the few Republicans who oppose portfolio limitations could not possibly do so if their constituents understood what they were doing.''



Mounds of Materials



Now that the collapse has occurred, the roadblock built by Senate Democrats in 2005 is unforgivable. Many who opposed the bill doubtlessly did so for honorable reasons. Fannie and Freddie provided mounds of materials defending their practices. Perhaps some found their propaganda convincing.



But we now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.



Throughout his political career, Obama has gotten more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who received more than $165,000.



Clinton, the 12th-ranked recipient of Fannie and Freddie PAC and employee contributions, has received more than $75,000 from the two enterprises and their employees. The private profit found its way back to the senators who killed the fix.



There has been a lot of talk about who is to blame for this crisis. A look back at the story of 2005 makes the answer pretty clear.



Oh, and there is one little footnote to the story that's worth keeping in mind while Democrats point fingers between now and Nov. 4: Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess.



(Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. He is an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election. The opinions expressed are his own.)



To contact the writer of this column: Kevin Hassett at khassett@aei.org



Last Updated: September 22, 2008 00:04 EDT







Welfare State Failures Are At Bottom Of The Crisis
By Star Parker
October 6, 2008



As our financial markets totter, as homes go into foreclosure, as Wall Street executives lose millions, as Americans have more and more difficulty getting loans, can anyone be happy?



Certainly. Those on the left who now, with unbounded glee, pen obituaries for the free market.



One can sense their joy as they have, they think, the last laugh.



Bernie Sanders, the far left senator from Vermont, was almost giddy on Larry Kudlow's TV show recently to hear free-marketer Kudlow endorse the bailout and tell Kudlow that he is glad to see he has become a socialist.



The Washington Post's Harold Meyerson writes, "The old order -- the Reagan-age institutions built on the premise that the market can do no wrong and the government no right -- is dying."



And, of course, there's the thrill in seeing greedy Wall Street capitalists laid bare for the heartless, exploitive monsters they are and see justice done as they fall by the free market sword by which they lived!



But, in fact, what we are watching is not a failure of markets, but the latest failure of the welfare state. The sad part is how few who wield political power seem to understand, or want to understand, that this is what's happened.



As the details behind the current debacle are unraveled, we see how government created one more entitlement -- the right to own a house -- and then devised an array of programs to subsidize in various ways "affordable housing." Like all welfare programs, the subsidies succeeded in influencing behavior, but the wrong behavior.



The greedy part, or, if one wishes to be forgiving, the confused part, of the Wall Street guys is their willingness to play ball with politicians over these years in turning our free country into a welfare state. Wall Street has regularly been a generous contributor to politicians who love to grow government and use it as a tool for social policy.



These smart investment bankers, commercial bankers, and traders could have gotten plenty rich, and stayed that way, by encouraging solid institutions to build our country properly. If anyone should appreciate the power of freedom and markets and want to encourage the proper role of government, the integrity of private property, and the care and nurturing of American families, you'd think it would be our financiers.



But instead of recognizing basics -- the principles of limited government and traditional values -- and fighting political pressures to undermine these basics, our financiers were happy to support the welfare state model.



They should have appreciated, as we must appreciate today, that the problem is not a failure of freedom and markets but of eroding the pillars and principles that make them possible and functional.



The best housing program this nation could have is for the government to stay out, let the price of real estate and credit reflect true realities of supply, demand, and risk, and let private people decide for themselves what they need to do and how hard they need to work to acquire what they want.



As the institution of government grows, we sadly watch the collapse of the institutions that really sustain growth of home ownership: American marriage and families.



According to the Census Bureau, the single largest incidence of homeownership, 86.3 percent, is among married-couple families. Yet, traditional families now amount to barely more than a quarter of our households.



And, sadly and ironically, the problem of family structure is most severe in low- income communities where government housing policy has been most targeted.



Social and economic policy are not separate universes but part of one fabric of institutions and laws that sustain freedom and prosperity.



Those who want to use the current crisis as an excuse to expand government and welfare state policies contribute to laying the foundation for our next crisis.



---



Star Parker is president of CURE, Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education (www.urbancure.org) and author of three books. She can be reached at parker(at)urbancure.org. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com









Do Facts Matter?
By Thomas Sowell
October 6, 2008



Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time."



Unfortunately, the future of this country, as well as the fate of the Western world, depends on how many people can be fooled on election day, just a few weeks from now.



Right now, the polls indicate that a whole lot of the people are being fooled a whole lot of the time.



The current financial bailout crisis has propelled Barack Obama back into a substantial lead over John McCain-- which is astonishing in view of which man and which party has had the most to do with bringing on this crisis.



It raises the question: Do facts matter? Or is Obama's rhetoric and the media's spin enough to make facts irrelevant?



Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years-- including the present year-- denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.



It was Senator Dodd, Congressman Frank and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.



It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today's financial crisis.



Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, five years ago.



Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration "right-wing ideology" of "de-regulation" that set the stage for the financial crisis. Do facts matter?



We also hear that it is the free market that is to blame. But the facts show that it was the government that pressured financial institutions in general to lend to subprime borrowers, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and, later, threats of legal action by then Attorney General Janet Reno if the feds did not like the statistics on who was getting loans and who wasn't.



Is that the free market? Or do facts not matter?



Then there is the question of being against the "greed" of CEOs and for "the people." Franklin Raines made $90 million while he was head of Fannie Mae and mismanaging that institution into crisis.



Who in Congress defended Franklin Raines? Liberal Democrats, including Maxine Waters and the Congressional Black Caucus, at least one of whom referred to the "lynching" of Raines, as if it was racist to hold him to the same standard as white CEOs.



Even after he was deposed as head of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines was consulted this year by the Obama campaign for his advice on housing!



The Washington Post criticized the McCain campaign for calling Raines an adviser to Obama, even though that fact was reported in the Washington Post itself on July 16th. The technicality and the spin here is that Raines is not officially listed as an adviser. But someone who advises is an adviser, whether or not his name appears on a letterhead.



The tie between Barack Obama and Franklin Raines is not all one-way. Obama has been the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae's financial contributions, right after Senator Christopher Dodd.



But ties between Obama and Raines? Not if you read the mainstream media.



Facts don't matter much politically if they are not reported.



The media alone are not alone in keeping the facts from the public. Republicans, for reasons unknown, don't seem to know what it is to counter-attack. They deserve to lose.



But the country does not deserve to be put in the hands of a glib and cocky know-it-all, who has accomplished absolutely nothing beyond the advancement of his own career with rhetoric, and who has for years allied himself with a succession of people who have openly expressed their hatred of America.



---



Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.



COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.






How Democrats Made The Bailout Necessary
By Henry Lamb
October 6, 2008



When Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and other upstanding Democrats point to the "failed policies" of the Bush administration as the cause of the current chaos in the financial markets, they are deliberately trying to transfer the spotlight from their own party's mistakes. The current crisis can be traced directly to President Clinton's revision of the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA).



The revision essentially required banks to expand their loan portfolios, to include more low-income customers. Bank examiners rated banks on their compliance with these revisions. Community organizations such as ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) were empowered to comment on bank compliance. Banks quickly learned that a generous donation to these organizations was easier than defending themselves against complaints filed by these organizations. Loans made to low-income borrowers were immediately sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose policies also were revised to allow the purchase of these loans.



The task of revising Fannie Mae's regulations fell to Herb Moses, Director of Product Initiatives, who was also the homosexual "lover" of Rep. Barney Frank, who was a member of the House Banking Committee which had oversight of Fannie Mae. These policy revisions were, in hindsight, spectacularly stupid. Rather than income verification, and standard debt-to-income analysis, a welfare check stub, or enrollment in a credit-counseling program were acceptable as "proof" of ability to make mortgage payments.



Freddie Mac specialized in the repackaging of these mortgages into securities which carried the federal government's seal of approval, and resold them through the financial markets.



The structure of disaster was almost complete. The Clinton administration directed federal agencies to expand credit, particularly home loans, to low-income buyers. ACORN, and other community organizations were empowered to promote loans and encourage banks to make them, and Fannie and Freddie were instructed to buy the loans. The Federal Reserve joined the parade by reducing interest rates to help facilitate these loans.



No wonder the housing market exploded.



Countrywide, once heralded as the nation's largest CRA lender, with $600 billion in sub-prime mortgages, was among the first to fall. Lehman Brothers, an eager buyer of Freddie Mac securities, also collapsed. Then fell Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; the ripples are still rippling across the financial markets.



As early as 2004, the Bush administration tried to increase regulation of Fannie and Freddie, but ran into stiff opposition from Democrats, especially from Barney Frank, who was afraid that lending activities would be sacrificed in the name of market risk. Now, Frank is blaming the Republicans for failing to enact reforms that he and his party blocked.



During the high-flying days at Fannie and Freddie, more than $200 million was spent on lobbyists and political contributions. Chris Dodd, Democrat Chair of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, collected $165,400. Barack Obama received $126,349, and Barney Frank got $42,350, of the $4.2 million the two housing giants gave to Congressmen.



Clearly, the Democrats caused the problem by insisting that mortgage money be made available to people who could not qualify for a mortgage under normal banking procedures. Democrats, led by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, blocked Republican efforts to tighten the regulations that governed Fannie and Freddie. Now, Democrats point the finger of blame at the Republicans.



The current crisis is yet another example of the mess government makes when it indulges in social engineering by trying to manage a free market. The declaration that all people have a "right" to housing was a popular theme among liberals in the 1990s. So popular, in fact, that in 1994, a lame-duck Democratic Senate ratified a U.N. treaty which effectively adopted the obligation to provide housing to everyone. Relaxation of the lending requirements at Fannie and Freddie was one way of meeting this new U.N. obligation.



The division in Congress, and in the country, about what caused the problem and what to do about it is a bright line between the people who believe government power must be limited by the people who are governed, and the people who believe government must limit the power of people who are governed. The people who subscribe to unlimited government power have achieved ascendency in Congress, and in the country. This philosophy results in disaster.



On the other hand, people who believe that the power of government must be limited by the people who are governed, may see the urgency of getting angry, active, and involved in government at every level. The people who share this belief are the people who have the power to unseat socialist politicians and unleash another era of freedom and prosperity.



___



Henry Lamb is the Chairman of Sovereignty International , and founder of the Environmental Conservation Organization (ECO).





Sowing ACORNs to reap the biggest oak tree in Washington, DC



ByJames Lewis





"From tiny ACORNs mighty oaks do grow" is the old slogan, from which the revolutionary organization ACORN derives its name. Like so many little hints dropped by the Left, you get a very clear message if you just think about it from their neo-Marxist revolutionary point of view. In the same way, the Sixties Weathermen Underground bombers got their name from a Bob Dylan line, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing." This name was one of Bill Ayers' early literary efforts, you might say. The bombs set in the Sixties by the Weatherman Underground were just a means to an end: Ayers and Dohrn wanted to become famous and earn their Leftist street cred. They didn't care if people died to make it happen. You gotta break some eggs to make that omelet.

Looking back in 1995 Ayers
said,



"I am a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist ... [Laughs] Maybe I'm the last communist who is willing to admit it. ... The ethics of Communism still appeal to me. I don't like Lenin as much as the early Marx."



Those are very fine distinctions, Professor. Ayers "was never a Stalinist," he says, but in his lifetime the mass murderers were Mao Zedong and Pol Pot, who also, by some inexplicable coincidence, turned out to be communists. Small c or big, they didn't care. It's like a confirmed white racist saying he was never a Hitlerite. So what? You're still associated with mass murder, with all your "ethics of Communism."



After the Sixties the New Left "Marched Through the Institutions" -- a phrase derived from Mao Zedong, who may have killed some 40 million Chinese, but of course that is not relevant to Professor Ayers. The Boomer Left was wildly successful and conquered America and Europe from within. That is why our media, our culture, and our education system are what they are today. You can tell what a politician thinks today by his or her relationship to the Boomer Left. (Think Hillary versus Sarah.)



Splitting blacks from white Americans was always part of the plan, according to Bill Ayers himself, and according to his radical buds like J-Wright. See, the trouble with old-fashioned Communism in America was that the actual workers got rich as capitalism starts to work better and better. Plumbers were able to charge mucho dolares. Blue collar workers went out and bought SUVs and boats, and went fishing. So the Left had to find a new, miserable proletariat, and right there were the inner city blacks, uprooted from their Christian families and work ethic in the South, often feeling lost and vulnerable. That's where Black Liberation Theology came in and the Black Muslims. That's where ACORN recruited its heavies. That's where the Democrats get their most obedient voters to this very day.



Ayers himself spent half an adult lifetime as an "education professor," which in his twisted view comes down to brainwashing millions of kids to think just like him. He is the Great Indoctrinator, and very proud of it. That's the meaning of his infamous 2001 cover photo, stamping on the American flag. Remember this is a publicity photo -- it's a message to the masses.



It has been speculated that Ayers ghosted at least one of Obama's two autobiographies, which seems likely on the face of it, though there is no proof positive. It would fit Ayers' particular pattern of malevolent narcissism and manipulativeness. You can imagine them tape-recording it together, and Ayers doing the write-up, Barack making the final touches, and off it goes to the (amazingly sympathetic) publisher. John F. Kennedy received the Pulitzer Prize for Profiles in Courage, which was ghosted by speech writer Ted Sorensen. It made Kennedy famous among liberal opinion mongers, just as Obama's autobiographies made him famous in that same fatuous circle. They figure if Obama can write, he must be one of the intellectual elite. But it's a fraud, of course, the same PR stunt Kennedy used, blessed by Joseph P. Kennedy's money and connections.



Obama is one of the ACORNs planted by the Left. He is the child of a Kenyan Third World socialist and a hippy chick from Kansas. Obama's white grandfather persuaded Frank Davis, the CPUSA propagandist in Hawaii, to become his teenage mentor. Since Davis had revealed himself in his porn books to be a pedophile, it was quite a risk to take. But it was all for the great cause.



Obama's career path was constantly greased by Leftist zealots, well into Harvard Law and beyond. To get to Harvard he was backed by ranting black radical Don Warden, now known as Khaleed Al-Mansoor, a close advisor to both the Black Panthers and Saudi Prince Bin Talal; Obama's early career may have been funded by his Saudi friend. (The original Khaleed Al Mansoor was a Caliph of Baghdad. Al Qaida aims to re-establish the ancient Caliphate. This is not an accidental alliance.) The Saudi motive for being tight with black radicals is obvious; it may now be really paying off in Obama's election. This is not to say that it's as simple as allegations that Obama is a Muslim, or a having Muslim strings. It's just two kinds of radicalism with a common enemy: The modern world as symbolized by the United States.



Like the Saudis, it seems that the Syrians have also been interested in Chicago radicals. Tony Rezko is a dual US-Syrian citizen, who constantly traveled back to Syria "for business." In a place like Baathist Syria you can't do that without the active collusion of the regime; it's like Saddam Hussein's old regime. Rezko, who just got convicted of fraud in connection with Illinois Governor Blagojevich, contacted Obama even while he was still at Harvard, to offer him a job in Chicago. Obama turned him down, but showed up in Chicago later. Hyde Park is full of Old Lefties like Ayers. And oddly enough, it's also full of Muslim radicals and corruptos like Rezko. "Les extrêmes se touchent," as the French said when Hitler and Stalin made their famous Pact in 1938. "The extremes join hands." They are all totalitarians who will murder for power. The Saudis are world-destroying radicals in their own way; that's the creed of Mohammed. The Lefties are just religious fanatics in their own way. Give them a common enemy, and they stick to each other like powerful magnets.



Radical Jim McKnight also backed Obama's entry into Harvard Law. World Net Daily wrote:



"McKnight, who enforced affirmative action for Attorney General Robert Kennedy, was far more than that to young Obama. He helped train him in the agitation tactics of Alinsky, who wrote the organizing manual, 'Rules for Radicals,' which he dedicated to mankind's 'very first radical, Lucifer.'"


And here we are today, with the first affirmative action presidential campaign. Tacit implied slogan: "You owe him your vote to make up for your racial guilt." Black slavery ended in 1863 at the cost of hundreds of thousands of mostly white lives in the Civil War; but never mind. It makes perfect sense to all the millions of mind-numbed Obots.



Back in Chicago, Barack Obama was "spiritually mentored" for twenty years by wild man Jeremiah Wright, whose Liberation Theology has been called "Marxism" by none less than Pope Benedict himself -- a man who understands the difference between theology and atheist ideology. The New Republic describes Barack Obama listening to J-Wright in church,



"Obama, sitting in the third row with his wife and two daughters, Malia and Natasha, stands, claps, prays, and sways along with the rest of the congregation. During the sermon, he watches the preacher carefully and writes notes."


Wonder if the Obama campaign would like to share those sermon notes with the voters? Oh, I forgot, the Obamas didn't know what J-Wright was screaming out on all those Sundays in church. Well, forget it then.



Wright started out being a Muslim and Black Nationalist, close to the Black Muslim movement of Louis Farrakhan, and became a Christian of convenience. How do we know? Because his creed has no God and no humility. All it has is rage and racism, following the Alinsky formula (from Marx and Lenin) that's it's essential first to whip up a lot of hatred for the enemy. That's what J-Wright does very well.



All this was a great career move for J-Wright, making him a high-paid agitator, or -- pahdon me -- a "community activist." That's the connection with ACORN, the network of "community activists," who packed the early caucus states in the Democrat primaries for Obama to beat Hillary. By packing the caucuses they got around the need for a vote by majority of registered Democrats. Bolshevik playbook, anybody? But then Mayor Richard Daley the Elder would also recognize that one.



Black Liberation "Theology" is hodge-podge Marxism under the guise of Christianity. It has no place for God, who is just subsumed under the next excuse for racial agitation. BLT is nothing but the mutated Marx virus, now deeply nestled in the body of a new host. In Chicago radical circles, even a sinister egomaniac like Father Michael Pfleger can openly inflame racial hatred against Hillary Clinton (!), and the Catholic diocese can't even fire him. The infectious virus has taken over the host.



Obama's campaign is just filled with little inside references to Communism. The speech in Berlin began with the words, "Citizens of the World!" --- a blatant echo of Marx and Engels' most famous slogan, "Workers of the World, Unite!" -- the last line of the Communist Manifesto. That's not close to the American tradition of political speech-making. It's pure 19th century Europe. Marx and Engels were Prussians, imbued with the Prussian sense of imperialist superiority. Berlin is the capital of Prussia, and became the capital of the united German Reich, cobbled together by Otto Bismarck.



The European Union is a quintessential Bismarckian enterprise, and Bismarck was the original model for the worldwide imperialism of Marx. Yes, things went off the tracks a little bit in the Third Reich, but so what? Anybody can make a few bloopers. That's why the European Left loves Obama: They recognize him as one of their own. He gives out all those old beloved signals. Barack Obama is emphatically not a politician in the American mold. He is an alien in a very profound cultural sense.



Obama organized his rally of 200,000 Berliners in front of the Prussian war monument. The whole Marx-worshipping Left understands that. It's like Martin Luther King giving his speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The location is the message.



Getting the rock band the Decembrists to start his biggest American mass rally in Portland, OR after beating Hillary was another signal to the insiders. The Decembrists are known for beginning their concerts with the Internationale, the Soviet imperial anthem. All these little hints are dropped to give the Left that little thrill of knowing something nobody else knows. It's childish, yes, but it's also a sign of who is coming into power if Obama wins. This is a bunch of very long-thinking, very radical, very egomaniacal folks, with deep roots in the old CP USA.



Today's Democrat Party is dominated by them. Just look at the evidence. It's all there once you start looking. It's not even hidden very well. But you have to be willing to face it.



When Obama debated Hillary he plainly gave her the middle finger, to the delighted whoops and shouts of his own supporters. You can see the YouTube video right here. His supporters went nuts as soon as he gave that "FU" sign on his cheek, while saying that Hillary is "in her element."



That's Obama's style: Look good to the dumb American masses, but give off those little finger symbols to the insiders. But "don't make any sudden moves," or you'll scare the whites. It's clever and devious. It's "the O-dacity" of Obamanism.



This whole campaign is dominated by double messages: Obama pretends to be a traditional American politician, while dropping constant winks and nods to the radical Left, who are yucking it up in the background. The message? "I'm your guy. Let me lie to the sucker masses, and we'll clean them out after I get into the White House."



Obama is surrounded by a tight circle of Communist billionaires. That's another old pattern. Karl Marx was supported by his wealthy friend Friedrich Engels. Frank Davis was married to a white Chicago socialite -- a socialist socialite. Bill Ayers is heir to his dad's Commonwealth Edison connections and fortune. Penny Pritzker is heiress to the Hyatt fortune. Al Gore's father was in the pocket of KGB billionaire paymaster Armand Hammer, whose very adopted name was a pun on a famous Communist symbol of the workers' "arm holding the hammer." Ironically, Armand Hammer ran Occidental Petroleum, which made the Gore family rich. But Al Gore, Jr. is now running a bloated campaign against oil, because it is doomed to destroy the planet.



Gore still runs with the wealthiest revolutionary capitalists in the world, the Google and Apple founders, who like all smart kids are eager to conquer the Earth -- for the good of the poor and disadvantaged, of course! They are just so unselfish. For that matter the Ford and MacArthur Foundations are now funding the Left. "Pinch" Sulzberger is the hereditary boss at the New York Times, for all the world like a hereditary aristocrat in Old Europe. Big money speculator Gyorgyi Soros is just the latest addition to a long string of revolutionary billionaires, eager to carry on the mission of old Karl the rabble-rouser. It fits their amazing snobbery to a T. They are the new Ruling Class in their own minds.



These are not American Democrats or liberals in any traditional sense. They are European-style rich Sixty-Eighters (soixant-huiteurs), and they pay for radicals to make their empty lives meaningful. They think they are born to rule, and will do anything for power. Nicholas Sarkozy started his presidency of France by bitterly attacking the 68ers for systematically ruining French culture. Sound familiar?



So is Obama a puppet of revolutionary billionaires? CORE's Niger Innis seemed to say so:



"I am not surprised to learn about this," said Niger Innis, spokesman of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). "It is clear that Barack Obama's ties to the left are familial, generational, and have lasted for several years."


He meant several decades.



But Barack Obama is a lifelong chameleon, opportunist and Shakespearian con man. It's impossible to know who is pulling whose strings. Obama has ridden his revolutionary friends to his present pinnacle of power -- well within reach of the American presidency. Once he gets there, he can screw his backers -- if he decides to, and if they can't blackmail him to keep him under control.



My guess is that Obama could jump either way if he is elected. But I don't want to find out. Gambling the fate of the United States on a fifty-fifty toss of a nickel is a very bad idea.



Rule 1 for November 4: Don't risk destroying the country.






On the WashingtonWatch.com Blog



The $700 billion financial services bailout bill featured last week passed Friday and was signed into law. The Members of Congress who changed their votes to pass it are featured in a WashingtonWatch.com post called "A Bailout Rogues Gallery . . ." See if your representative switched by clicking here.



Featured Items



The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 is the official name of the financial services bailout legislation. Our analysis of government estimates places its cost at about $2,800 per U.S. family.

Last week was hectic. Dozens of bills streamed across the House floor even while it dealt with the financial services bailout and other issues.

Many of these bills were listed in a series of WashingtonWatch.com blog posts called
Silly Season on Capitol Hill; Silly Season, Part Deux; Silly Season, Part C; and Silly Season, Part IV.

One of those bills was
H.R. 6063, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2008.

The bill would continue the programs of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at a cost of about $200 per U.S. family.

Congress has adjourned until January, but leaders may call the membership back to take care of unfinished business later this year or early next.



H.R. 1424
The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008
Costs $2,859.25 per family



H.R. 6063
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2008
Costs $200.80 per family







September 30, 1999 "Notice the date"










Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending






In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.



The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.



Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.



In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.



''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''



Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.



In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.



''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''



Under Fannie Mae's pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 -- a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.



Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.



Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.



Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the economic boom of the 1990's. The number of mortgages extended to Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by 46.3 per cent.



In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for homes increased by 31.2 per cent.



Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in particular tend to have on average worse credit ratings.



In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.



The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the credit-worthiness of credit applicants.



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