The Blog @ Spolitics

WaPo: Obama Was Notably Silent on New Regulations for Fannie and Freddie

After giving him a pass for so long, WaPo finally decided to vet Obama’s recent claims about the current financial crisis and found them lacking in honesty. Obama likes to pretend he foresaw the problem, but he didn’t foresee it as much as he simply responded after it was already too late. The bad loans infecting the market right now were made in 2005 and 2006. By 2007, when Obama came onto the scene proposing legislation to fight mortgage fraud, it was already way too late. Bear Stearns had already melted down and capital was drying up causing the liquidity crisis. Mortgage fraud was no longer a problem because nobody could afford to make loans anymore anyway.

However, John McCain did foresee the problem and proposed legislation to do something about it:

In 2006, [McCain] pushed for stronger regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — while Mr. Obama was notably silent. “If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole,” Mr. McCain warned at the time.

Why was Obama silent? Because Fannie and Freddie were stuffing his mouth full with campaign cash. His silence was bought and paid for by the very people who helped create this mess. Now they work as advisers on Obama’s campaign and bundle campaign contributions for him.

Meanwhile, Obama has dug up an old regulatory repeal co-written by a McCain adviser and tried to blame everything on it — without any substantiation. Of course, he can’t substantiate it because it’s nothing but an empty, partisan argument. Even more comical, his advisers backed it as well:

Would it be churlish to point out that another author of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley law is former congressman Jim Leach, a founder of Republicans for Obama? Or that Obama advisers Lawrence H. Summers and Robert E. Rubin supported the repeal — which was signed by President Bill Clinton?

Obama tells him us that words matter. But when American needed him to speak up, he was silent.