Fannie Mae and
'Freddie Maxine'
https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/stephen-moore/fannie-mae-and-freddie-maxine
By Stephen Moore |
November 13, 2018 | 8:43 AM EST
Democratic
Rep. Maxine Waters of California appears a lock to become the next chairman of
the House's powerful Financial Services Committee. Waters is pledging to be a
diligent watchdog for mom and pop investors, and recently told a crowd that
when it comes to the big banks, investment houses and insurance companies,
"We are going to do to them what they did to us." I'm not going to
cry too many tears for Wall Street since they poured money behind the Democrats
in these midterm elections. You get what you pay for.
But here we go again asking the
fox to guard the henhouse.
Back during he the financial
crisis of 2008 to 2009, which wiped out trillions of dollars of the wealth and
retirement savings of middle-class families, we put the two major arsonists in
charge of putting out the fire. Former Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd of
Connecticut and former Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts were the
co-sponsors of the infamous Dodd-Frank regulations. Readers will recall that
good old Barney resisted every attempt to reign in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
and said he wanted to "roll the dice" on the housing market. That
worked out well.
Meanwhile, Dodd took graft
payments in the form of low-interest loans from Countrywide, while greasing the
skids for the housing lenders in these years. Instead of going to jail or at
least being dishonorably discharged from Congress, he wrote the Dodd-Frank bill
to regulate the banks.
Enter Maxine Waters. Back in
2009, I had a run-in with "Mad Maxine," as she is called on Capitol
Hill. The two of us appeared together on HBO's "Real Time With Bill
Maher," and when she pontificated about the misdeeds of the housing lobby,
I confronted her on the money she took from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac PACs for
her campaign.
Here is how the conversation
went:
MAHER: Don't you think Wall
Street needs regulation? That's where the problem is: that there was no
regulation.
MOORE: Well, let's talk about
regulation. One of the biggest institutions that have failed this year was
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This is an institution that your friends, the
Democrats, in fact, you, Congresswoman Waters, did not want to regulate. You
said it wasn't broke five years ago at a congressional hearing, and you took
$15,000 of campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie.
WATERS: No, I didn't.
MOORE: Yeah, you did. It's in the
FEC (Federal Election Commission) records.
WATERS: No, it's not.
MOORE: And so did Barney Frank.
And so did Chris Dodd.
WATERS:
That is a lie, and I challenge you to find $15,000 that I took from Fannie PAC.
I have to confess that Waters is
very persuasive. I feared when the show was over that I had gotten my numbers
wrong and that I had falsely charged the congresswoman of corruption. But
several fact-checking groups looked it up, and sure enough, I was right. She
took $15,000 from the PAC and another $17,000, all told.
I was also right about her
statements during a 2004 congressional hearing when she said:
"Through nearly a dozen
hearings, we were frankly trying to fix something (Fannie and Freddie) that
wasn't broke. Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and
particularly at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Franklin
Raines."
We learned the hard way just four
years later; this was all a fraudulent claim to avoid oversight of her campaign
contributors. Imagine if a Republican had said these things.
She took in more than $100,000
from Wall Street this year as well. None of this is illegal, but it calls into
question her shakedown tactics. First, she threatens to put their head in a
noose as chairman of the Financial Services Committee — as she is getting them
to pony up campaign contributions. Pay to play? You decide.
Waters has had run-ins with the
House Ethics Committee because of fundraising tactics and insider wheeling and
dealing. Back during the financial crisis, she was suspected of helping arrange
meetings with Treasury Department officials and getting bailout money for
OneUnited, a troubled bank that her family owned major stock holdings in. She
beat the rap of corruption, but it sure smelled bad.
So will Maxine Waters be the
crusading financial protector of our 401k plans and save America from the next
financial bubble? Well, there will certainly be lots of harassment and
shakedowns. But don't count on her steering us clear of Wall Street excesses.
If history is any guide, Mad Maxine will be way too busy raising money from the
people she is now in charge of regulating.
Stephen Moore is a senior fellow
at The Heritage Foundation and an economic consultant with FreedomWorks. He is
the co-author of "Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy."
MAXINE WATERS USES NAZIS TACTICS TO HARASS
TRUMP…. But where was her big mouth when Obama and the Clinton were sucking in
bribes and looting the poor of Haiti, or operating a fraudulent slush fund
charity????
"But
what the Clintons do is criminal because they do it wholly at the expense of
the American people. And they feel thoroughly entitled to do it: gain power,
use it to enrich themselves and their friends. They are amoral, immoral, and
venal. Hillary has no core beliefs beyond power and money. That should be clear
to every person on the planet by now."
---- Patricia McCarthy -
AMERICANTHINKER.com
MAXINE
WATERS, LOUIS FARRAKHAN, ERIC HOLDER and BARACK OBAMA – RACIST, VIOLENT HATE
MONGERS!
Rep. Maxine
Waters is fine with Farrakhan. And the left is fine with Waters. Eric Holder
recently posed with Farrakhan. DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONTPAGE MAG
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