there is plenty of blame to go around... but the problem is to what section. It
is the masses that pay for their stupidity, but they are being tricked into
blaming each other instead of the real enemy: the rulling class. And then the
masses are tricked into coming under the wing of one of the sections of the
rulling class.
This doesn't have to be this way. A better world really is possible
In short: proletarian revolution serving the eventual abolition of class
divisions and the corresponding relations of exploitation, oppression, and
inequality and nothing less by using the scientific method and approach of
communsism (in this sense as a science).
Hey Shadez, were you been, still sucking professors dicks on a daily basis I
see.
You get on my nerve sitting around preaching about doing nothing but giving the
government all of the power in one big basket, your brain is fucked, what are
you going to do when this Communistic Fad is over? China and the USSR were/are
two of the biggest genociders in history! You brainwashed bitch, if your dad was
still around he would kick your ass, it's easy to see that he isn't, that's were
you get your, join a "cool' group and feel "loved" mentality
from, a textbook lost inferiority complex situation.
Justice: A federal grand jury in New York is probing the accounting shenanigans
at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It's about time, and we hope it doesn't end
there.
Remember the early 2000s, when companies such as WorldCom, Enron, Tyco and Xerox
suddenly and spectacularly were revealed to have been cooking their books?
Remember the glee expressed by Washington politicians, especially Democrats, as
they watched CEOs and their underlings get perp-walked out of their buildings
and into federal custody?
Enron became the poster child for corporate misdeeds. In the accounting crisis
of 2002, CEO Ken Lay was one of the most loathed human beings on Earth. And no,
that's not an exaggeration.
Here was California Attorney General William Lockyer, one of many Democrats on
the national scene who gloated at the downfall of the Enron chief and others:
"I would love to personally escort Lay to an 8-by-10 cell that he could
share with a tattooed dude who says, 'Hi, my name is Spike, honey.'"
Lockyer wasn't the only one swept up in a spiteful prosecutorial frenzy. Sure,
some of the prosecutions were deserved. But some were excessive, part of a
corporate witch hunt.
As noted in a 2003 study by Kathleen Brickey, a Washington University law
professor, the Justice Department brought 50 major fraud prosecutions from March
2002 to August 2003. An estimated 90 corporate officers were involved. That's a
lot of prosecutions.
Basically, any major-company CEO whose stock price fell sharply could be sued or
charged with a crime and sent to prison.
Democrats wasted no time calling this a "GOP" scandal, tarring any
Republican official with charges of corruption for taking so much as a dollar
from any of the companies. Never mind that Democrats were also prominent on the
political gift lists.
Fanning the fire were news media highlighting Republican ties to scandal-plagued
firms while all but ignoring Democrat links.
In the end, what emerged from this atmosphere of retribution and attack was
Sarbanes-Oxley — the toxic corporate regulatory law that has arguably
destroyed more wealth than anything WorldCom, Tyco or Enron ever did.
We mention all this because we now have an opportunity, thanks to the New York
grand jury, to probe perhaps the greatest financial crime ever — one that
dwarfs Enron in size and scope.
Yes, we're talking Fannie and Freddie.
Here's how James B. Lockhart III, head of the Office of Federal Housing
Enterprise Oversight, described the two companies back in 2006, before the
meltdown occurred:
"The result of (Fannie's and Freddie's) rapid growth unconstrained by
market forces and a weak regulator was years of mismanagement, flagrant earnings
manipulation, and systems-and-controls problems. Managements of both companies
were forced out, earnings were misstated by an estimated $16 billion, fines
exceeding one-half billion dollars were imposed, and remedial costs will exceed
$2 billion."
Yet Congress did nothing. Fannie and Freddie continued to enjoy a virtual
monopoly of the housing finance market, holding nearly half the nation's $12
trillion in mortgage assets in 2007.
And what happened to Fannie's and Freddie's top executives, almost all with deep
ties to the Democratic Party? Did they get perp-walked to prison like WorldCom's
Bernie Ebbers, Tyco's Dennis Koslowski, Adelphia's John Rigas, ImClone's Sam
Waksal, or any of the others who did time for corporate misdeeds in the early
2000s?
No. Jim Johnson, former Walter Mondale aide, became head of Barack Obama's vice
presidential search committee. Franklin Raines, who headed Fannie from 1998 to
2004, the years of its worst excesses, pocketed nearly $100 million in pay and
bonuses from Fannie. He, too, became an adviser to Obama.
Other Fannie-Freddie alumni did equally well. Rep. Rahm Emanuel has been front
and center in crafting a new rescue bill. Ex-Clinton Justice official Jamie
Gorelick careens from career catastrophe to catastrophe, and still gets top
jobs. It pays to have ties.
Meanwhile, as previously documented, Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Chris Dodd
repeatedly thwarted reforms. Yet today they stand front-and-center as Democrats
try to "fix" a problem they created.
As such, any investigation into Fannie and Freddie must include Congress, both
current and past.
There's lots of evidence that the two mortgage giants had become little more
than taxpayer-guaranteed front companies for Democrats, who used them to reward
supporters with cheap loans and to provide jobs for out-of-work politicians.
