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To: carranza2 who wrote (371885)7/27/2008 10:35:57 PM
From: Cynic 2005  Respond to of 436258
 
Great Find!!



To: carranza2 who wrote (371885)7/28/2008 2:26:12 AM
From: Cactus Jack  Respond to of 436258
 
The Journal was dead on re: FNM and FRE. Seen this?

Nothing like a little class warfare to help cover up a fraud:

Mr. Raines reacted with immediate fury, denouncing us in a letter to the editor as "glib, disingenuous, contorted, even irresponsible," and that was the subtle part. He turned up on CNBC to say, in essence, that we had made it all up because we didn't want poor people to own houses

online.wsj.com

The Fannie Mae Gang

By PAUL A. GIGOT
July 23, 2008; Page A17

Angelo Mozilo was in one of his Napoleonic moods. It was October 2003, and the CEO of Countrywide Financial was berating me for The Wall Street Journal's editorials raising doubts about the accounting of Fannie Mae. I had just been introduced to him by Franklin Raines, then the CEO of Fannie, whom I had run into by chance at a reception hosted by the Business Council, the CEO group that had invited me to moderate a couple of panels.

Mr. Mozilo loudly declared that I didn't know what I was talking about, that I didn't understand accounting or the mortgage markets, and that I was in the pocket of Fannie's competitors, among other insults. Mr. Raines, always smoother than Mr. Mozilo, politely intervened to avoid an extended argument, and Countrywide's bantam rooster strutted off.

I've thought about that episode more than once recently amid the meltdown and government rescue of Fannie and its sibling, Freddie Mac. Trying to defend the mortgage giants, Paul Krugman of the New York Times recently wrote, "What you need to know here is that the right -- the WSJ editorial page, Heritage, etc. -- hates, hates, hates Fannie and Freddie. Why? Because they don't want quasi-public entities competing with Angelo Mozilo."

That's a howler even by Mr. Krugman's standards. Fannie Mae and Mr. Mozilo weren't competitors; they were partners. Fannie helped to make Countrywide as profitable as it once was by buying its mortgages in bulk. Mr. Raines -- following predecessor Jim Johnson -- and Mr. Mozilo made each other rich. Which explains why Mr. Johnson could feel so comfortable asking Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) to discuss a sweetheart mortgage with Mr. Mozilo, and also explains the Mozilo-Raines tag team in 2003 . . .



To: carranza2 who wrote (371885)7/28/2008 8:31:33 AM
From: DebtBomb  Respond to of 436258
 
"Don't Tar Us With an Enron Brush" LOL, either the short sellers, the terrorists, or oil speculators did it.



To: carranza2 who wrote (371885)7/28/2008 8:40:24 AM
From: stan_hughes  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 436258
 
Yeah sure, Fannie and Freddie are just a couple of squeaky cleans..... right.....

Message 24797881

Mr. Raines had better pray that his group doesn't take the whole US Treasury down with them here -- I can only imagine how the villagers with their pitchforks and torches would react -- France in the latter 1700s comes to mind