Where Are They Now?

[dufflebag 0]

something for mox, akdiver, navaireman to think about........

Where Are They Now?

Some insight on the Mortgage Problem; how we got their and Where they are now.

Franklin Raines wa s a Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Fannie Mae.

Raines was forced to retire from his position with Fannie Mae when

auditing discovered severe irregulaties in Fannie Mae's accounting

activities. At the time of his departure The Wall Street Journal noted,

" Raines, who long defended the company's accounting despite mounting

evidence that it wasn't proper, issued a statement late Tuesday

conceding that "mistakes were made" and saying he would assume

responsibility as he had earlier promised. News reports indicate the

company was under growing pressure from regulators to shake up its

management in the wake of findings that the company's books ran afoul

of generally accepted accounting principles for four years."

Fannie Mae had to reduce its surplus by $9 billion.

Raines left with a "golden parachute valued at $240 Million in benefits.

The Government filed suit against Raines when the depth of the

accounting scandal became clear.

http://housingdoom.com/2006/12/18/fannie-charges/ .

The Government noted, "The 101 charges reveal how the individuals

improperly manipulated earnings to maximize their bonuses, while

knowingly neglecting accounting systems and internal controls,

misapplying over twenty accounting principles and misleading the

regulator and the public. The Notice explains how they submitted six

years of misleading and inaccurate accounting statements and inaccurate

capital reports that enabled them to grow Fannie Mae in an unsafe and

unsound manner." These charges were made in 2006. The Court ordered

Raines to return $50 Million Dollars he received in bonuses based on the

miss-stated Fannie Mae profits.

Tim Howard - Was the Chief Financial Officer of Fannie Mae. Howard "was

a strong internal proponent of using accounting strategies that would

ensure a "stable pattern of earnings" at Fannie. In everyday English -

he was cooking the books. The Government Investigation determined that,

"Chief Financial Officer, Tim Howard, failed to provide adequate

oversight to key control and reporting functions within Fannie Mae,"

On June 16, 2006, Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., asked the Justice

Department to investigate his allegations that two former Fannie Mae

executives lied to Congress in October 2004 when they denied

manipulating the mortgage-finance giant's income statement to achieve

management pay bonuses. Investigations by federal regulators and the

company's board of directors since concluded that management did

manipulate 1998 earnings to trigger bonuses. Raines and Howard resigned

under pressure in late 2004.

Howard's Golden Parachute was estimated at $20 Million!

Jim Johnson - A former executive at Lehman Brothers and who was later

forced from his position as Fannie Mae CEO. A look at the Office of

Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's May 2006 report

<http://www.ofheo.gov/media/pdf/FNMSPECIALEXAM.PDF> on mismanagement

and corruption inside Fannie Mae, and you'll see some interesting things

about Johnson. Investigators found that Fannie Mae had hidden a

substantial amount of Johnson's 1998 compensation from the public,

reporting that it was between $6 million and $7 million when it fact it

was $21 million."

Johnson is currently under investigation for taking illegal loans from

Countrywide while serving as CEO of Fannie Mae.

Johnson's Golden Parachute was estimated at $28 Million.

Where are they now?

Franklin Raines? Raines works for the Obama Campaign as Chief Economic Advisor

Tim Howard? Howard is also a Chief Economic Advisor to Obama

Jim Johnson? &n bsp;Johnson hired as a Senior Obama Finance Advisor and was

Selected to run Obama's Vice Presidential Search Committee

If Senator Obama has plans to clean up the mess, he's got the right

advisors to help. They made the mess in the first place.

Would you trust the men who tore Wall Street down to build the New Wall

Street ?

[obender 0]

get out of here with your political #######... and if you want talk politics at least use facts not fiction.

30 sec search on the net would tell anybody what are your words worth

Texas should not have a say in this elections due to production of current president

obender

[slim 1,530]

Texas should not have a say in this elections due to production of current president

I'm surprised he even made it past governor.

But, if you blame Texas, you have to hold the rest of the U.S. accountable as well.... they re-elected him.

[Brad and Vika 129]

In my opinion, it sounds like the OP is advocating some sort of increased oversight to "rebuild Wall St.". The solution is not more regulation, there is plenty of that now. We need regulators that understand the complex instruments that they regulate. In the alternative, do not allow the wizards of Wall St. to create and sell things that are not fairly transparent. Neither candidate is talking about the real problem her (complexity vs. regulatory understanding).

Just my opinion.

[slim 1,530]

Like the other stuff in America... the system is broken. Can they mend it together for long enough... we'll see.

[Ban Hammer 13,474]

Texas should not have a say in this elections due to production of current president

I'm surprised he even made it past governor.

But, if you blame Texas, you have to hold the rest of the U.S. accountable as well.... they re-elected him.

[obender 0]

Texas should not have a say in this elections due to production of current president

I'm surprised he even made it past governor.

But, if you blame Texas, you have to hold the rest of the U.S. accountable as well.... they re-elected him.

... but I do

obender

[NavarreMan 10]

OK dufflebag - try this on for size

Last night during the Presidential debate, John McCain, in an effort to justify continuing the war in Iraq, compared it to the Russian war with Afghanistan by stating that when the Afghans pushed the Russians out of Afghanistan, the US failed by not staying with the Afghans and thereby allowing the Taliban to move in. What the old geezer has forgotten is that we armed and aided the Taliban in their fight against the Russians. They were there during the war and they were there after the war. We knew it and we gave them support. Please reference the following Wiki:

Although there is no evidence that the CIA directly supported the Taliban or Al Qaeda, some basis for military support of the Taliban was provided when, in the early 1980s, the CIA and the ISI (Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence Agency) provided arms to Afghans resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the ISI assisted the process of gathering radical Muslims from around the world to fight against the Soviets. Osama Bin Laden was one of the key players in organizing training camps for the foreign Muslim volunteers. The U.S. poured funds and arms into Afghanistan, and "by 1987, 65,000 tons of U.S.-made weapons and ammunition a year were entering the war." Link

Guess who was in charge during this? Reagan! George II and McCain's "hero". That puppet Palin was in town yesterday spewing her half-baked idea of what it takes to run a country. The sheep lined up by the thousands in the rain to hear what the puppet had to say. The very definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and still expecting different results.

The Real Deal

So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:

The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.

Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.

Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.

Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.

The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.

Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.

Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.

The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.

An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.

Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) the crisis is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.

–by Joe Miller and Brooks Jackson Link

[Ban Hammer 13,474]

OK dufflebag - try this on for size

Last night during the Presidential debate, John McCain, in an effort to justify continuing the war in Iraq, compared it to the Russian war with Afghanistan by stating that when the Afghans pushed the Russians out of Afghanistan, the US failed by not staying with the Afghans and thereby allowing the Taliban to move in. What the old geezer has forgotten is that we armed and aided the Taliban in their fight against the Russians. They were there during the war and they were there after the war. We knew it and we gave them support. Please reference the following Wiki:

Although there is no evidence that the CIA directly supported the Taliban or Al Qaeda, some basis for military support of the Taliban was provided when, in the early 1980s, the CIA and the ISI (Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence Agency) provided arms to Afghans resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the ISI assisted the process of gathering radical Muslims from around the world to fight against the Soviets. Osama Bin Laden was one of the key players in organizing training camps for the foreign Muslim volunteers. The U.S. poured funds and arms into Afghanistan, and "by 1987, 65,000 tons of U.S.-made weapons and ammunition a year were entering the war." Link

Guess who was in charge during this? Reagan! George II and McCain's "hero". That puppet Palin was in town yesterday spewing her half-baked idea of what it takes to run a country. The sheep lined up by the thousands in the rain to hear what the puppet had to say. The very definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and still expecting different results.

The Real Deal

So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:

The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.

Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.

Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.

Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.

The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.

Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.

Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.

The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.

An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.

Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) the crisis is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.

–by Joe Miller and Brooks Jackson Link

you didn't get the memo, did you? it's all bush's fault.

[mox 298]

you didn't get the memo, did you? it's all bush's fault.

It's the American people's fault for giving him a second term, and for letting him get away with it.

[dufflebag 0]

we did not give him the first term, the system gave him that one, we only gave him the second.

I like Ron Paul, but only when he is taking his L-Dopa.

I calculated that every dollar that oil goes down, Russia loses 22 Billion dollars a year.

Elena tells me that she is worried about economy in Russia and the banks that are collapsing. What is happening in the USA is nothing what will happen in Russia. I was a member of few marriage sites in the past. Although I have found the one ( I hope), I have seen so many people email me from Ukraine and Russia. So can it be that people think there is a disaster pending in Russia and Ukarine? The stock markets are at a 1/4 of what they were and Ukraine government is collapsing into another election.

Elena is really worried about her family, friends and some of her co workers. Many have bought too much with credit and now interest rates are going up.

Can anyone tell me their experiences?

[NavarreMan 10]

Changing the subject will not excuse your lame attempt to point fingers. There are plenty of directions to point. The reasons are many. But IMO, the two biggest reason this happened was because people are greedy and the regulations that were in place to keep this from happening were removed. Greed took over and new and innovative ways were found to bleed us of every penny. Unfortunately for all, the path that was taken to accomplish this was very risky and when it collapsed, it did so in a very big way. It is sort of like running around for a few days writing checks on an empty account. It works for a little while but then it catches up to you. I can guarantee you that Uncle Sam will not be there to make deposits into your checking account because you wanted to get rich quick.

[obender 0]

Changing the subject will not excuse your lame attempt to point fingers. There are plenty of directions to point. The reasons are many. But IMO, the two biggest reason this happened was because people are greedy and the regulations that were in place to keep this from happening were removed. Greed took over and new and innovative ways were found to bleed us of every penny. Unfortunately for all, the path that was taken to accomplish this was very risky and when it collapsed, it did so in a very big way. It is sort of like running around for a few days writing checks on an empty account. It works for a little while but then it catches up to you. I can guarantee you that Uncle Sam will not be there to make deposits into your checking account because you wanted to get rich quick.

well, capitalism is based on greed. read a bit of unpopular on this side of the pond Karl Marx. without deep modifications to the system itself this will happen over and over again...

but i agree about dufflebag ...

obender

[slim 1,530]

I have seen so many people email me from Ukraine and Russia. So can it be that people think there is a disaster pending in Russia and Ukarine?

Or, could it be that women will naturally gravitate toward the richest men they can find?

[Thomas-n-Elena 0]

Or, could it be that women will naturally gravitate toward the richest men they can find?

Um Slim I have read many of your monetary laments, does that mean your wife is an underachiever or did she just fall for that sexy bod and boyish charm?