Keep
our Men and Women and their Balls at Home
Bumped into a Republican friend of mine this week, who grabbed
me to say, “It seems only Michelle is “-------“(slang for intimate relations)
Barack more than his buddy Putin these days. Har, har!”
OK, Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, the UN, and now Edward
Snowden, it does seem that the President’s “friend” Vlad Putin is going out of
his way to frustrate, embarrass and
anger the President of the United
States.
It’s not in Obama’s makeup to do anything drastic on foreign policy to retaliate against the Russian thugs, but........
He could author a bold move--which most American likely would applaud--that would signal his
unhappiness and hurt Putin and the Russians in their collective egos and
wallets, if Obama would
announce that he is keeping the US out the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia because of continued Russian recalcitrance and poor behavior.
Pull the jocks from the games, get NBC to yank the television plug and offer to pay for any contractual fines the network may
encounter.
I am certain that a significant majority of congressional
Republicans, if not every one of them, would endorse necessary legislation
doing that.
Let Al Jazeera or whatever facility broadcast it, without
the pre-eminent country in the world sending its athletes.
It would take luster from the event and money from the
Russian nation and be a black eye for Putin, his current ex-Olympian wife or girlfriend
or whatever she is (who reportedly is pushing him to make all of the
investments in Sochi).
Will the Russians and some others hate us? Yes, but so what, they hate
us already.
Some US athletes would be bummed out, but there always
will be national and international competition
available for them to set their world records and to show.
Just
boycott it Barack!
OK Guys, I'll Return to The
Mortgage World
In the July 20 Barron’s,
Jonathan Laing took a poison pen approach to current congressional interest in
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and displayed a bias and fact void, shocking in a
seasoned reporter.
Laing wrote:
"Both companies got caught in the mid-2000s cooking their
books in order to meet earnings targets that maximized executive bonuses."
(Maloni note: This was a common yet bogus
accusation by Fannie's business and GOP political enemies.)
In 2004, three senior
Fannie Mae executives were accused
in a shareholders lawsuit of engaging in securities fraud, following a
politically motivated regulatory report suggesting securities violations. By
year’s end, the executives were forced out of the company but continued to
fight the allegations.
Shortly after, in 2005,
the Bush Administration blessed replacement for the departed Fannie officials, notably Dan Mudd succeeded Frank Raines as Chairman.
And the company—now led
by compliant and politically cowed officers--paid a fine for the nonexistent
regulatory offenses
But, in Fannie Mae’s
case, eight years after the fact,in
the fall of 2012—a year before Laing
published his Barron’s piece--federal Judge Richard Leon, issued three separate
rulings throwing out the charges saying no evidence existed which could
convince any jury that the three Fannie officials were guilty of securities
violations.
But, that news never
made Laing’s Barron's column.
To me, Laing ignored the
Judge Leon actions-- which both blew up the 2004 Bush Administration’s politically
driven charges--and undercut Laing’s current Fannie Mae disdain, because a lot of crap thrown at the GSEs flowed form those baseless charges.
A journalist with
Laing’s credentials should present the total story not just the Right Wing pap
which perpetuates a fallacy.
Watt Vote Put Off
Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid (D-Nev.) pulled the planned vote last week on Rep, Mel Watt (D-SC) to become the new Fannie
and Freddie regulatory Director and said it will come up in September.
That’s not good news and
suggests Republican opposition. That GOP block could soften if they get some
support for their versions of F&F reform or who knows what else they would trade
for supporting Watt.
In one sense if they can speed
the destruction of Fannie and Freddie or put tighter controls on them in
whatever is their transition to the “new mortgage world,” it makes Watt’s ascension almost
an afterthought, since—if the Republicans get their way—there won’t be too much
of F/F to oversee.
(They seem to forget
that, right now, Fannie and Freddie are what is producing, seamlessly, their and every other Senator and Member constituents'
conventional mortgage financing.)
IMF Survey on F&F
Inside Mortgage Finance
(IMF) the preeminent industry publication for both reporting and data, conducts
regular polls of its readers.
Here are the current
results of a recent poll, based on the emergence of legislative alternatives to
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (My thanks to
IMF publisher, Guy Cecala, for letting me use his survey info.)
Poll Archive
Two major GSE reform bills have surfaced on
Capitol Hill this summer. Both call for closing down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
in relatively short order. But only one proposes a replacement entity that
would continue to provide a government guarantee on conventional mortgages that
are securitized. What do you think?
It’s a good idea to
replace Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with some sort of government MBS program
that provides catastrophic insurance coverage.
13%
Fannie Mae and Freddie
Mac should be dissolved but not replaced with any new government program. The
private sector can fill any gap in mortgage financing.
9%
It’s a big mistake to
eliminate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac given their current importance to the
mortgage market as well as the fact that they are paying billions of dollars to
the Treasury.
78%
What Others Are Saying
One begins to see editorials opposing House passage of the Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.)
legislative restructuring of the mortgage finance system legislation, which
includes Fannie and Freddie obliteration. The House Financial Services
Committee Chairman’s legislation was reported favorably—by only three votes—from
his committee.
Maybe some are awakening
to the fact that Hensarling plans to turn over the nation’s mortgage finance
system totally to the commercial banking industry and their investment banking
subsidiaries and appreciate the danger of that move.
Milwaukee Journal
Politico
The American Banker
The Golden Goose
Hensarling:” Let’s eat her
now!”
C-W: “Let’s wait awhile
until she gives more eggs and eat her then!”
U.S. Treasury Lowers
Borrowing Estimate For July to September Quarter
Dow Jones Global
Equities News
By Jeffrey Sparshott
Monday, 29 July 2013
(c) 2013 Dow Jones &
Company, Inc.
WASHINGTON--The U.S.
Treasury Department trimmed its borrowing expectations for
the third quarter of the
year after big dividend payments from mortgage giants
Fannie Mae (FNMA) and
Freddie Mac (FMCC) boosted its cash holdings.
The Treasury Department
estimated Monday that it will issue $209 billion in net
marketable debt from
July to September, down from its estimate of $223 billion
made three months ago.
The adjustment follows
$66 billion in dividend payments, received June 28, from
the
government-controlled mortgage lenders. That left the Treasury with a $135
billion cash balance,
$60 billion more than it had anticipated.
*************************************************************
*************************************************************
This came out just after I published this morning, but if David Fiderer (aka "The Hebrew Hammer" )wrote it and Barry Ritholz "tweeted" it, it's well worth my crowd reading it.
Maloni, 8-5-2013
4 comments:
Although the executives were not found guilty of securities fraud, both companies restated earnings which would qualify as "caught cooking the books"
Possibly in a non-political world, but not in the DC world of GSEs.
IMO, Fannie's paid them because it was easy for the new CEO and chastened board to put out cash and--in effect--say it was because his predecessors were bad people (that was the essence of the deal with the WH, which now had Fannie by the short hairs.
Judge Leon's decisions in 2012 should have put to death all of the securities fraud BS--and so much else which most in the public never will see and know including how accurate was Fannie initial implementation of FAS 133--but which will be made public if a certain book gets published this year.
Let me note something here which I've offered before but bears repeating, Fannie and Freddie were different companies, had different cultures and operating styles.
I don't have the depth of knowledge about Freddie and always have had some doubts about their bookkeeping and regulatory approach in the pre-2005 era.
But, the political world treated F&F alike and we all could benefit from some senior and respected former Freddie talking about what he or she saw.
Why is Obama taking a 180 degrees turn on the GSEs issue and endorsing the Hensarling's bill? Obama stated today his idea of giving the MBS business to private banks, is this the solution to help future homeowners? I am disappointed at his new ideas.
See my new blog up in a few minutes.
Post a Comment