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Fan and Fred look like poorly run hedge funds: lots of leverage and snarkily hedged risk. Does the word Enron ring any bells?
- Wall Street Journal 20 February 2002
Companies taking on so much risk and debt and backed by taxpayers ought to be more transparent in what they tell the world.
- Wall Street Journal 28 February 2002
Fan and Fred don't function like other companies. They're allowed to pile up debt implicitly guaranteed by taxpayers without being held to even the minimum of corporate governance standards.
- Wall Street Journal 19 March 2002
Even in this post-Enron world Fan and Fred do not provide as much information about these securities as private mortgage lenders do.
- Wall Street Journal 1 July 2002
When the House of Representatives can't get even a modest regulatory bill out of committee the dangers of Fannie Mae become clear in reality.
- Wall Street Journal 9 October 2003
White House chief economist Gregory Mankiw dares to tell the truth about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The mortgage giants were not amused - which means we're getting somewhere.
- Wall Street Journal 23 December 2003
The housing finance giants have been engaging in some accounting funny business.
- Wall Street Journal 23 September 2004
They were cooking the books. Big time.
- Wall Street Journal 4 October 2004
There were many moments of high entertainment during the House hearings on Fannie Mae's creative accounting. But our favourite was the Mister Magoo performance given by Barney Frank.
- Wall Street Journal 14 October 2004
Understanding their half man half beast nature is crucial to fixing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the wake of their recent financial scandals.
- Wall Street Journal 17 December 2004
Fannie Mae - a slick semiprivate firm operating with the patronage of politicians - is the kind of institution one still expects to find in a country like France.
- Wall Street Journal 23 December 2004
Every Congressional session can be counted on to produce its share of bad bills. But the reform bill for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is in a class of its own.
- Wall Street Journal 25 October 2005
The Federal Election Commission shed some light on how Freddie Mac rewards friends.
- Wall Street Journal 27 April 2006
What's the difference between Enron and Fannie Mae? The guys at Enron have been convicted.
- Wall Street Journal 14 June 2006
Just when you think they're defeated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac arise in Congress to kill any attempt to clean up their dangerous habits.
- Wall Street Journal 10 May 2007
Fannie and Freddie went up the Hill to fetch a pail of money.
- Wall Street Journal 29 September 2007
Barney Frank and Chuck Schumer have come up with a proposal that would increase the risk to taxpayers from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
- Wall Street Journal 23 October 2007
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac aren't held to the same standards of accountability as everyone else.
- Wall Street Journal 21 April 2007
It's time Americans understood the price they could soon pay for the beltway's confidence game with these high risk government sponsored enterprises.
- Wall Street Journal 10 July 2008
Investors continued to flee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac almost as frantically as the political class tried to reassure everybody there was nothing to worry about.
- Wall Street Journal 12 July 2008
Does Hank Paulson want to leave the US financial system better than he found it? That's his test in the wake of his commitment to use taxpayer money to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
- Wall Street Journal 15 July 2008
I do think I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OCC and OTS. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidised housing.
- Barney Frank 25 September 2003
I worry frankly that there's a tension here. The more people in my judgement exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury - which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disaster scenarios.
- Barney Frank 10 September 2003
If it ain't broke why do you want to fix it? Have the GSEs ever missed their housing goals?
- Maxine Waters 10 September 2003
I am just pissed off at OFHEO because if it wasn't for you I don't think that we would be here in the first place. And Freddie Mac who on its own you know came out front and indicated it is wrong and now the problem that we have and that we are faced with is maybe some individuals who wanted to do away with GSEs in the first place you have given them an excuse to try to have this forum so that we can talk about it and maybe change the direction and the mission of what the GSEs had which they have done a tremendous job.
- Gregory Meeks 25 September 2003
OFHEO did not improperly apply accounting rules - Freddie Mac did. OFHEO did not try to manage earnings improperly - Freddie Mac did. So this isn't about the agency's engagement in improper conduct - it is about Freddie Mac. Let me just correct the record on that. I have been asking for these additional authorities for four years now. I have been asking for additional resources - the independent appropriations assessment powers. This is not a matter of the agency engaging in any misconduct.
- Armando Falcon 25 September 2003
However I have sat through nearly a dozen hearings where frankly we were trying to fix something that wasn't broke. Housing is the economic engine of our economy and in no community does this engine need to work more than in mine. With last week's hurricane and the drain on the economy from the war in Iraq we should do no harm to these GSEs. We should be enhancing regulation - not making fundamental change.
Mr Chairman we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac and in particular at Fannie Mae under the outstanding leadership of Mr Frank Raines. Everything in the 1992 act has worked just fine. In fact the GSEs have exceeded their housing goals.
- Maxine Waters 25 September 2003
I believe there has been more alarm raised about potential unsafety and unsoundness than in fact exists.
- Barney Frank 25 September 2003
Banks are in a far more risky business than we are.
- Franklin Raines 16 October 2003
We have in our financial system right now two very large and growing financial institutions which are very effective and are essentially capable of gaining market shares in a very major market to a large extent as a consequence of what is perceived to be a subsidy that prevents the markets from adjusting appropriately, prevents competition and the normal adjustment processes that we see on a day by day basis from functioning in a way that creates stability. And so what we have is a structure here with a very rapidly growing organisation, holding assets and financing them by subsidised debt, growing in a manner which really does not in and of itself contribute to either home ownership or necessarily liquidity or other aspects of the financial markets.
You cannot have in a rational government or a rational society two fundamentally different views as to what will happen under a certain event. Because it invites crisis, and it invites instability.
- Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan 24 February 2004
I just briefly will say Mr Chairman obviously like most of us here this is one of the great success stories of all time.
- Chris Dodd 24 February 2004
Mr Chairman what we're dealing with is an astounding failure of management and board responsibility driven clearly by self interest and greed. And when we reference this the best we can say is 'it's no Enron'. That's a hell of a high standard.
- Chuck Hagel (R) 15 June 2006
Bill Ayers is a member of the Weather Underground that sprung from the SDS - the Students for a Democratic Society. He isn't just a person who could be a threat: he was a threat and he did horrible things. He built bombs. He put a bomb down at the NYPD, he put a bomb down at the Capitol, he put a bomb down in San Francisco, he put a bomb down at the Pentagon. This was a vicious young man.
- Former New York FBI assistant director Bill Gavin on Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn
Bill marries Bernardine and he appears again as a college professor, morphed into somebody he's not.
- Former New York FBI assistant director Bill Gavin on Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn
William Ayers in the age of terrorism will be Barack Obama's Willie Horton.
- Larry Johnson
The McCain/Palin sign I put in my yard was spray painted over with 'fuck you' on the one side and 'Obama' on the other with black spray paint. I replaced the sign a few days later and it was torn from the ground and the same remarks were then spray painted on my garage door. I've left them there for others to see just how these thugs behave.
- 'HillaryOrMcCain'
And there is more to it than this, for dancing is practiced to reveal whether lovers are in good health and sound of limb, after which they are permitted to kiss their mistresses in order that they may touch and savour one another thus to ascertain if they are shapely or emit an unpleasant odor as of bad meat. Therefore from this standpoint, quite apart from the many other advantages to be derived from dancing, it becomes an essential to a well ordered society.
- Thoinot Arbeau
He wants to double the capital gains tax or almost double it. I'd rather give it to charity than to him.
- Wayne Huizenga
Obama is nothing but Adolf Hitler with a new suit on.
- 'Sarracuda'
Barack Obama can't be blamed for all of his followers' vile actions but like it or not he trails in his wake a howling mob of barbarians. If he is elected these bottom feeders will have achieved their goal and some of them at least will be rewarded for doing their leader's dirty work. This is not your fathers' Democratic Party.
- John Hinderaker
A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor - he speaks in accents familiar to his victims and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
To read 'Why Organise' in its entirety is to understand the profound limits of Obama's literary talent.
- Jack Cashill
He is the first candidate since Watergate to abandon the public financing system and his campaign is now being flooded with hundreds of millions of dollars in undisclosed and questionable donations.
- John McCain
It was the most memorable time of my life. It was a touching moment because I never thought this day would ever happen. I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car. I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage. You know, if I help him, he's gonna help me.
- Peggy Joseph
This culture of coddling has turned some kids into complete wussbags and whiners.
- 'theclamsman'
This is what I'm talking about when I talk about the Entitled Obamatronic Generation - the kind of assholes who get in teachers' faces when they fail their kids for cheating/plagiarism.
- 'theclamsman'
You have to pinch yourself - a Marxist radical who all his life has been mentored by, sat at the feet of, worshiped with, befriended, endorsed the philosophy of, funded and been in turn funded, politically promoted and supported by a nexus comprising black power anti-white racists, Jew-haters, revolutionary Marxists, unrepentant former terrorists and Chicago mobsters, is on the verge of becoming President of the United States.
- Brit Hume
Watching a McCain speech yesterday afternoon and then Obama's program last night I had this urge to pose questions to voters: which candidate cares more about substance? Which has a vision of where the country needs to go? Which treats voters with respect? Which appeals more to voters' best instincts? Which is willing to engage those with whom he disagrees? Which candidate wants America to feel proud, and which wants Americans to be afraid?
- Steve Benen
Spending an estimated three million dollars on a Ginsu knife like infomercial, Obama reminded America he's an over the top kind of guy, excessive, pompous, and eminently phony. The Oval Office like set for Wednesday night's infomercial is, in the manner of Obama, entirely too much. It's cheesy. Are we headed for the Ronco presidency, the Ginsu knife infomercial to sell the presidency in the same way we sell Chinese kitchen gadgets? Heaven help us if this is what the debate over the future of America has become. The guy with the fake presidential seal addressed the nation from the fake Oval Office in a infomercial fake. God save us.
- Jim Wooten
This is an amazing race. The incumbent president has approval ratings somewhere between Robert Mugabe and the ebola virus. The economy is supposedly on the brink of global armageddon. McCain has only $80 million to spend whilst Obama's burning through $600 mil as fast as he can and doesn't really need to spend a dime given the wall to wall media adoration. And tonight Chris Matthews' doctors announced his leg tingle has metastasised, leaving his entire body like a vibrating cellphone whose ringtone is locked on 'I'm In Love, I'm In Love, I'm In Love, I'm In Love, I'm In Love With A Wonderful Guy'. And yet a cranky old broke loser is within two or three points of the King of the World. Strange.
- Mark Steyn
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