So I have been listening closely to Obama thoughts on the current financial crisis and he has been casting quit few stones and pointing quite a few fingers lately. One of his major points was that the economic crisis has been caused by Washington and Wall Street through their greed and deregulation. Guess what? I agree with the Senator. I strongly believe that the greed and irresponsibility of bankers and politicians got us in this mess.
While Obama decries Wahsington’s corruption and chastises them for refusing to regulate the financial industry, he has been in bed with some of the most troubled mortgage banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over already by the U.S. Treasury after they collapsed because they were “too big to fail” after suffering losses of approximately $14 billion, while owning $5 Trillion in mortgages. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122064650145404781.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news)The Freddie and Fannie bail out is estimated to cost the American tax payers up to $100 billion dollars or more. (http://www.businessandmedia.org/commentary/2008/20080917073634.aspx)
Freddie and Fannie used their lobbying budgets to keep the feds off their backs and avoid any form of reasonable regulation. Barack Obama was the seconded largest recipient of political donations from these failed institutions. Fannie and Freddie gave $126,349.00 to Obama and $21,550.00 to McCain. (http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/update-fannie-mae-and-freddie.html)
It seems while Obama is at the front of the line for criticizing Washington and Wall Street, he was also at the front of the line when the mortgage industry was giving out money. Oh and it gets worse.James Johnson, the CEO of Fannie Mae in the 90’s eared 21 million dollars in his final year with the company. He received $7 Million in questionable real estate loans from failed sub-prime mortgage lender Countrywide Financial. He was the head of Obama’s Vice Presidential Selection committee and when his corruption became public he voluntarily stepped down. (http://www.nysun.com/national/top-talent-scout-for-obama-tied-to-subprime-lender/79579)
Franklin Raines a former Fannie May executive is Obama’s current housing advisor. According to the NY times, Raines was forced to give up $15.6 million in stock options for his roll in manipulating Fannie Mae’s earnings (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/19/business/19fannie.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1222910058-IMdaxFh2tN7hSsZcI3mLCg).
And we cannot forget Jamie Gorelick, the former Clinton administration deputy attorney general. She was also a Fannie Mae vice chairman and accused in having a roll in falsifying transactions to manipulate the record books to meet the 1998 earnings targets. Despite having no financial experience, she served as chairwoman from 1997 to 2003, during which Fannie Mae developed a $10 Billion accounting scandal. These moves, triggered multi-million dollar bonuses for company executives. She has been rumored to be Obama’s choice for attorney general. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32845-2005Apr6.html)
While I am at it, let’s throw in Penny Pritzker. She is currently Obama’s finance chairwoman and helped to finance his 2002 senate campaign. Prior to her position on Obama’s campaign, she served as chairwoman of Superior Bank. In 2000, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition accused the bank of providing sub-prime loans to individuals at a rate far exceeding other institutions. The FDIC ruled “Superior Bank suffered as a result of its former high-risk business strategy, which was focused on the generation of significant volumes of subprime mortgage and automobile loans for securitization and sale in the secondary market.” (http://164.109.59.122/docs/7/77151.html) The Pritzker family settled at $460 million dollars. All this happened on her watch. (http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-04-02-subprime_N.htm)
It appears that while Obama decries the deregulation, he has placed some of the same bankers who got us into this mess on his campaign staff. Either Obama is a terrible judge in character or is just as corrupt as those he accuses of corruption. How can you claim to be separate from all this corruption, but at the same time have failed executives and crooks sitting on your campaign path?! How?! Thieves belong in jail, not on a campaign staff! Maybe Obama should clean out his own closet before he throws stones at others. It is ludicrous to promise reform, regulation, and to punish those who caused this corruption while these corrupt bankers sit on your campaign staff and advise you! It is dishonest to blame bad financial practices in the lending industry only to accept over $100,000.00 dollars from such an institution. You can either believe Barack Obama’s words or you can believe Barack Obama’s actions, but you cannot believe both. It is facts such as this that cause me to completely doubt and distrust the authenticity of Barack Obama. I cannot understand why or how Obama can select advisors who hurt the ordinary hard working Americans he claims to stand up for.
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