White House lady protests too much

In Georgie Boys world it's always someone elses fault.
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http://media.photobucket.com/image/george%20bush%20legacy/kelley74ny/BushLegacy.jpg?o=2
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Here's what the NYT wrote in 2003:

From the NYTimes, 9/11/03:

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios. . .

The Bush administration today recommended. The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios. . .

Posted by: Sigmond | December 22, 2008 6:54 PM

Yeah, except the Bush administration kowtowed to their Wall Street buddies and bailed out on that proposal.

"The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents."
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http://www.americablog.com/2008/12/lobbying-and-blissful-ignorance-led.html
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The Whitehouse certainly does have some facts on their side:

" * House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) criticized the President's warning saying: "these two entities - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - are not facing any kind of financial crisis ... The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing." (Stephen Labaton, "New Agency Proposed To Oversee Freddie Mac And Fannie Mae," New York Times, 9/11/03)
* Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Chairman Christopher Dodd also ignored the President's warnings and called on him to "immediately reconsider his ill-advised" position. (Eric Dash, "Fannie Mae's Offer To Help Ease Credit Squeeze Is Rejected, As Critics Complain Of Opportunism," New York Times, 8/11/07) "

Freud....You post comments in a left wing blog as a news source? lol

Looks like this is the new talking point for the current administration's failures...it's all the media's fault.

Frank:
Your comment on the NYT piece and Perino's reaction are telling. Only if a "reporter" reading the subject story could honestly state that its premise was "that the administration contributed to the crisis by vigorously pushing housing ownership while downplaying regulation" could that person then also state with consistency that "there's nothing wrong with it." Because you candidly note, "Actually, that's the way a lot of reporting gets done..." I presume that you honestly view the NYT as "reporting." It’s not.

There is something wrong with the "way a lot of reporting gets done." It's not reporting at all; it's opining. If the NYT piece were the result of "reporting" it would have noted if not demonstrated that no President, no Congress, and no Administration has ever stood against an "ownership society." If the NYT piece had been reportage rather than opinion-mongering, there would at least have been an attempt to show that the subject policy was but one more huff in the hurricane of hot air blowing up and down Pennsylvania Ave and through the canyons of Wall Street until millions of "straw" houses on Main Street came down around their occupants: the pigs with liar loans and equity lines of credit used up for either flat screen TV's or Rhine Cruises as their taste dictated.
The credit charade did indeed play out on Bush' watch with his participation and he will forever be damned accordingly. But please, lets get a different Rx on all those worldview lens that look at Bush from the coastal newsrooms and see a politician more venal or dumb, or both, than any of his predecessors. Or his successor!

Obama understands the financial crisis and has a good team of economic advisers. However, it is congress that passes the legislation that will become the law of the land. Once Pelosi, Schumer, Frank and Dodd get their hands on what Obama proposes, it will be business as usual -kowtowing to the Democrat special interests.

All social and economic indicators point to problem after problem and yet Geo W is unable to acknowledge any responsibility. This is not new one of his professors at Harvard Business School said George would say something that was obviously wrong and a few minutes later deny he had said it. To get some idea of his responsibility for the current mess we're in see the secret swearing in of Cox for the SEC. Sorry can't load images here but do invite you to http://www.saintpeterii.com

Yes, 'win brown,' and in 2003 Barney Frank was certainly correct.

Back in July, Bush said "I think the system basically is sound, I truly do, and I understand there's a lot of nervousness. . . . But the economy is growing, productivity is high, trade is up, people are working. It's not as good as we'd like."
Case closed!

I love how the Wingnuts on here continue to bang their heads against the wall insisting that all our economic problems stem from two guys (Frank and Dodd) who were members of the MINORITY party at the time (2003) of this decision. The Republic Party can't do anything right and their membership is filled with a bunch of dopes who are dumber than a bag of rocks but they sure do one thing well: Propaganda.

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.
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"Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories," California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.
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Bowing to aggressive lobbying — along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK — regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081201/ap_on_bi_ge/meltdown_ignored_warnings;_ylt=Aq.Eh8_VNVP.DBtDSiFtD.Os0NUE
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Posted by: Sigmond | December 22, 2008 7:31 PM
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Sig,
Lobbying and blissful ignorance led Bush to back off regulation. The Republicans continue to spin the credit crisis as the fault of the poor and minorities. Yes, the global credit crisis had nothing to do at all with repackaging complex securities where Wall Street made trillions in a program that would be commonly known as a Ponzi scheme or Amway-like. Nope. Just because Wall Street profited and paid everyone millions in bonuses at each step of the sales (and repackaging) cycle, it doesn't mean they had any responsibility for the collapse.

It was all the fault of the poor, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd who forced Wall Street to give loans to minorities. Forget about the vast difference in actual numbers between loans to poor and minorities compared to the complicated, risky rubbish sold throughout the world. No one understood what was inside those repackaged deals, but they didn't care because the money was good, until the collapse. In the minds of the GOP, it's always the fault of the poor or some Democrat or another even though they controlled all three branchs of govt for most of the last eight years, IDIOTS. For the reality-based world, the story is slightly different.

This is all a set-up for Obama so he can blame everything on Bush, just like F.D.R. blamed everything on Hoover. It's nice to see the Trib quoting a false story from another newspaper that is near bankruptsy. The NYT's forgot to mention that Bush tried to have regulations over Fannie and Freddie, but Dodd and Frank played the race card.

We know how the Mayberry Machiavellis (BushCo) worked, so we also know that this was politics rather than principle. The term "ownership society" was essentially a campaign slogan to sell their plans to privatize social security, first and foremost. (It also applied to their generous proposal to allow us to pay for our own health insurance and educations.) They were trying to create a legacy phrase like The New Deal (by destroying the New Deal programs.)

But it's also true that the policies they put into place on homeownership were used to try to expand their electoral base by encouraging minority home ownership and, of course, paying off their contributors in the financial world. No news there. But it was all politics, from beginning to end, even if Bush himself had some starry eyed delusion that he was making everybody in America an "owner."

This is what comes of having the president's political hit man (Rove) intimately involved in policy.

None of this is to suggest that this wasn't based on the noxious free market fundamentalism of the conservative movement. It certainly was. They would have tried to deregulate and remove all oversight of the industry no matter what. But Bush-Rove-Cheney were a unique trio who were able to use the federal government to not only advance their self-serving economic and foreign policy ideology for the benefit of their rich contributors, they were also obsessed with using every lever of government as political tools to advance their electoral prospects and destroy the political opposition. The problem is that they thought they could control forces that no government can control through marketing, lies and propaganda. And they got schooled. Unfortunately, everyone else is going to have to pay the price.

Wow...two typical Frank James stunts rolled into one blog entry. We all know James has a problem with women - from Hillary Clinton to Sarah Palin. Now the White House Press Secretary is "White House Lady." Is James going to call the next White House Press Secretary "White House Guy?" We get it Frank, ladies should stay in their own house, not the White House. Next, he explains to us mere mortals that the press gets a nice silly idea in their head, and then when some facts are inconvenient, they're chucked so that the reader doesn't have to bother with silly altnerative information. The NYT lost all credibility as a reliable source of information in this last campaign. Let's not try to rehabilitate their well-deserved reputation for yellow journalism now -- that type of thing just gives the defender a bad case of credibility issues as well.

Bush's legacy- millions of people without jobs, tens of millions without health care insurance, record foreclosures, debt levels and deficits, unprecedneted bailouts, 4,500 dead U.S. soldiers in Iraq, lies, falsehoods and deceptions and the list goes on and on. Bush is the very worst President in U.S. history. No doubt about that one. After he's out of office he can go back to his daddy's ranch and pretend he's a cowboy. Oh, I almost forgot, he and Laura bought a big house in Dallas.

So the chief mouthpiece for the Bush Administration accuses the NY Times of selectively choosing facts to push forward a false agenda. What is she complaining about? That the Times followed Bush and Cheney's example of cherry picking "facts" to start the Iraq war?

"...Actually, that's the way a lot of reporting gets done and there's nothing wrong with it..."

-Frank James

Classic media condescension-when the news is not what I want it to be, I just decide what the news will be- makes for a better read, and "reporters, never have to actually take the time to understand what they are passing off as news.
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The financial meltdown root causes can be attributed to many different bad decisions, horrible monetary policy, and feel good "everyone has a right to home ownership" rhetoric... over many years including those prior to this admin.

For the NYT to simplify it down to ONLY the bad decisions made by the Bush admin is just plain lazy reporting...of course who really wants to take the time to sit down and read through all of the complexities of what put us into the state we are in-when it sure is a lot more fun to point at Bush, already hated by most NYT readers, and say "he did it"- now that's how you sell some papers..

NY Times publicized a fake letter from Pairs mayor...now that true investigational reporting. NY Times has no credibility, unless your delusional to honesty and factual reporting. They market their agenda. That why their bankrupt. Where is our "special prosecutor" on this sub-prime fiasco? Lost within the Democratic congress... the largest financial disaster in history being rather silently and internally kept under the radar. Where have all the great reporters gone...guess I just read what Pairs Hilton is up to today.

I think these articles enumerating the myriad failures of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are enlightening.

But I'm even more fascinated by the Comments sections -- that there are still American voters out there who will come to the defense of this tiny little man.

I really can't imagine what your world is like.

I have voted for Republicans far more times than I have voted for Democrats in the last 40 years. But the Republican Party is only going to exist as a tiny little Party as long as the GOP tries, for whatever reason, to continue to defend The Worst President Ever.

"For the NYT to simplify it down to ONLY the bad decisions made by the Bush admin is just plain lazy reporting..." (posted by heartburn)

If you read the entire NYTimes article, heartburn, you wouldn't say that. Even if you read the entire Frank James summary, you shouldn't say that. Bush's ownership society agenda definitely led to a 'surge' in subprime lending, one of the many causes of our economic problems today.

Posted by: rupert | December 23, 2008 12:15 PM

There is likely nothing factually incorrect in the NYT article- but the facts left out exclude the article from being anything but a case study in what the Bush admin did or did not do-

AND the point of James's article was to validate that the NYT article was good reporting- and it was not...

Any '"news" story attempting to identify a cause of the economic meltdown we are in that excludes any macreconomic mismanagement over the last ( at least) two admins, and ignores the obvious conflict of interest and lack of oversight by folks like Raines, Frank and Dodd is attempting to take a very large complex issue with many root causes and dumbing it down to take a political swipe at the Bush admin... swipe away if you like, but don't try to call it news.

Instant karmas gonna get you, Mr Bush
Gonna look you right in the face
Better get yourself together darlin'
Join the human race.

There's EVERYTHING wrong with the way this supposed news story was done and your little whinefest proves what any regular swamp reader already knows, that you, Frank, are a worthless reporter who is more concerned about his personal cause than reporting the truth. The day is coming soon, Frank, when enough people have been disgusted by your supposed reporting that even you in your lofty perch in Washington will no longer be unaffected by the rampant layoffs in the newspaper industry. The only difference your slanted reporting will have made is that people will be cheering instead of lamenting those layoffs because they ensnared a partisan turned hack like you.

ignores the obvious conflict of interest and lack of oversight by folks like Raines, Frank and Dodd is attempting to take a very large complex issue with many root causes and dumbing it down to take a political swipe
Posted by: heartburn | December 23, 2008 12:56 PM

Yes, just like you have done here (see above).

Just passing by, wanted to hear what the noise level was, from the " whining" Republicans. They are laughable and pathetic, with all of their whining !!!
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE AND WHOLE. NOW.