GSEs and Stuff

The Corruption of Bob Corker, Part 1.5

I hope everyone already has read Part 1.5 the Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) financial expose’ which the publisher, Rocky Top Politics, says will be a five part series. (GSE Links is carrying the link, also.)

RTP discusses and exposes the financial minutia of how Senator Corker —noted GSE opponent and possible GSE stock manipulator—accumulated a net worth of something over $100 Million after getting elected to the Senate.

Just in case you missed it, here is the link, which I earlier sent to many of you, plus other GSE friends, media types, some Hill folks, and to a few “Inside the Beltway” chattering class (because they talk a lot, not because the local weather just got real cold).

https://rockytoppolitics.com/2016/11/18/the-corruption-of-bob-corker-part-1-5/

Fascinating detail; makes me wonder what their source documents or who their sources are?

The more people talk about Corker’s financial actions the more chance someone will recognize possible illegal behavior and the less likely Corker—who actively is angling for a cabinet sport with the Trump Administration—will succeed in his goals, including shutting down the GSEs.

Corker’s call during a national TV interview for investors to “short” Fannie and Freddie brought him undue attention, as well as complaints to the Senate Ethics Committee, which promptly buried them.

Smart politicians always prepare clever excuses beforehand--when they handle soiled cloths—not so clever ones scramble shortly thereafter when their dirty laundry gets turned inside out by the media

Corker and his office have been fighting these types of allegations since the WSJ wrote about his Tennessee financial machinations. (Reportedly, the WSJ, New York Times, and maybe the SEC still are on that case.)

I also wonder if the Senate’s reported richest Senator, Mark Warner (D-Va.)—as RTP also reports--will answer how he joined Corker a few years ago and invested in an obscure itty-bitty Tennessee firm, called the Pointer Fund, which produced millions in profits for each?

What I’ve never understood about Warner's incessant campaign against the GSEs is why he would want to throw possibly 7,000 or 8,000 Fannie and Freddie employees, his constituents—who live and vote in Virginia and represent a lot of local buying power and tax revenues—out of their jobs??

Could there be any connection between the negative GSE legislative positions Corker and Warner share and the reported wealth they made together? Read the article(s) and make up your mind.

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FAQs about RTP

Answers—as provided by Rocky Top Politics-- to frequently asked RTP questions. (I think RTP lives in Tennessee.)

1. What the Hell?

2. Who is RTP?
Who indeed.

3. Why are you doing this? 
Because the media and most politicians won’t, can’t or don’t.

4. What is your agenda?
Why, just good government — or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

5. Are you Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Libertarian, Buddhist or Baptist?

Yes.

6. Are you Jim Summerville, Glen Casada, Mike Harrison, Ben Cunningham, Heidi Weinstein, Don Sundquist or Bobbie Petray?
No. And why do you feel the need to call us ugly names?

7. What is your favorite sports team?
The Cleveland Browns. Or maybe the Jamaican Olympic Bobsled Team.

8. Is this a short-term flash-in-the-pan diatribe?
You wish.

9. Sounds like fun. Can I play too?
We will soon post an anonymous email where you can send us your tip or rumor. Make sure to follow the instructions. Marquis de Queensbury and Marquis de Sade rules apply.

10. Why don’t you allow comments?
Because we are not all that interested in your opinion – just your info.

Based on their answers, I like RTP, already, and whatever they do to Corker is icing on the cake.

My Trump opinions from last week 

As promised, I am going light/easy on the President-elect, giving him a chance. Reince Priebus is fine. But…..

Steve Bannon is a bigot and anti-Semite, yet Trump named his as his chief White House strategist. It sends a chilling signal. Those Bannon labels aren’t just Jewish fantasies, the Breitbart guy has earned them with his actions, his writings, and his priorities.

I don’t like him, but I also think, at some point, he will get the President-elect in trouble and that should concern thoughtful R’s.

I am still hoping DT will rise above some of his campaign rhetoric and seize a chance to lead a troubled nation.

I can live with Mike Flynn as his national security advisor and Mike Pompeo at CIA, since I favor a robust foreign policy and distrust the Russians and their friends. (Although there were/are other equally conservative, well/better credentialed candidates for each spot. Whomever Trump names as Secretary of State better wear his/her big boy pads from Day 1, because these two dudes will want to eat State’s lunch.)

Jeff Sessions has no redeeming AG qualities, only his early support for Trump. He’s not a well-educated or well written attorney, by virtue of multiple legal opinions he’s penned. And, there are strong suggestions he’s not fair minded.

Sessions and his Senate colleagues will deny it, but the Senator appears to be a son of the old South in every bad sense of that phrase.

Personally, Sessions remind me of Richard Nixon’s AG John Mitchell.

Forty six years ago, when I worked on Capitol Hill for Pittsburgh Congressman Bill Moorhead, one of the four kids killed, by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University, was our constituent, 19 year old Allison Krause, shot while walking to class with her boyfriend. (Ten others also were wounded including one who was paralyzed from the waist down.)

My boss initiated a congressional letter, signed by many colleagues, asking Attorney General Mitchell to convene a federal grand jury to investigate what happened.

We were stonewalled and ignored because Nixon’s White House and Mitchell thought those kids were “radicals” and deserved their fate once they protested the Vietnam War and threw rocks, while the Guardsmen who fired their loaded M1’s into a small crowd of student protestors were American heroes.

In classic Southern tradition, if conservative Sessions still was chasing phantom or real “Communists,” he might keep Trump away from Vladimir Putin, but I am afraid Sessions only will be Trump’s hammer with minorities, immigration, and the media, much in the way Mitchell served Nixon.

GSE Thoughts

Beyond the Rocky Top events, nothing much has changed since last week.

More court delays. More speculation if Trump’s pro-GSE allies can offset the powerful array of GSE congressional, media, and industry opponents who want the two to die so they can divvy up the GSEs revenue.

I saw a gaggle of GSE opponents participate in a Dallas panel discussion and some of the anti’s names made me think of the bar scene in “Star Wars.”

Also available on GSE Links (the ultimate GSE intel repository) is a transcript from Investors Unite meeting last week where Tim Howard dissected the Treasury Department forced GSE sales of high quality loans in the guise of reducing GSE risk (as well as making those securities investors rich and channeling money away from F&F which otherwise would have gone to the taxpayers). 

Psst, those loans don’t represent much risk and if they do, the GSEs are paying investors too much to take on that limited possibility.

Non-GSE Note

Several years ago in this blog, I called on new President Obama to undertake a major infrastructure rebuilding program because he would/could get GOP support, the nation needed that important repair, replacement, and new facilities work, and it would mean jobs when the nation had significant unemployment and under employment. 

At that time, I received an email from Ron Klain, who held a variety of early jobs in the Obama Admin, including head of BHO’s own infrastructure efforts, disagreeing with me and saying it was not all the positives I believed the effort to be. (For a time before the first Obama Admin, Ron had been a Fannie Mae consultant and we worked together.)

Ironically, yesterday, Ron repeated those same arguments in a Washington Post op ed, pointing out why Donald Trump’s infrastructure plan, absent some important changes (which, reportedly, Hillary Clinton built into her infrastructure scheme) may not be cost effective or additive.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-big-infrastructure-plan-its-a-trap/2016/11/18/5b1d109c-adae-11e6-8b45-f8e493f06fcd_story.html?utm_term=.f28c45345e3a

Maloni, 11-21-2016

(I know this has been two blogs in 8 days, but I promise, friends and foes, I am not going back to weekly blogging.)

He Won, She Lost, It's Our Turn Now

Cats & Dogs; the Election, Trump, and the GSEs

Guilty. 

While most of my year’s worth of non-GSE political blogging wasn’t wasted, it was way off the mark. Hillary Clinton—whom I was supporting and touted—didn’t win.

Donald Trump--who I didn’t think had an August snowball’s chance and who I excoriated--came through, lost the popular vote but beat her in the Electoral College, which the GOP would be foolish to drop, since they secured two their last three elections wins (Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016) through that artifice. 

 Trump is our next President….Gag, haff-kaff, harrumph!!

OK, I was wrong, wrong, wrong, and if you missed it, I was dead wrong. A lot of others were wrong, too, but that doesn’t make my massive miss feel any better.

I still think Trump was helped by the Russian hackers, but what I think doesn’t matter. My choice and predictions were the wrong ones I underestimated the anger and dislocation his supporters felt. I underestimated the depths to which he and his campaign would stoop. I underestimated “rogue” FBI agents and their equally rogue agency head Jim Comey. I overestimated HRC’s ground game and its ability to snap back. I overestimated how certain demographic groups would vote. Did I mention the Russians?

In a nutshell, I still worry that Donald Trump’s thin-skin will cause him to move against North Korea (or fill in the blank_______) and start a nuclear holocaust, if he feels insulted. I see only “yes men” surrounding him.

I despair that the new/old R political appointees he’s rushing pell mell to bring in –reportedly because his initial transition team didn’t think he would prevail and didn’t do much early work--will have their own agendas and “President Trump” will be too overwhelmed by his broad new responsibilities to slow them down or stop them, i.e. the Trump pledge to help the little guy and who has been shut out of jobs and prosperity will be quickly ignored.

I think DT won on policy promises that are too tough to pull off, even with a GOP Congress which also won and doesn’t feel it needs to sit back while Trump shapes America’s future and gets credit.

I believe Mr. trump has miscalculated the challenge of governing in a pluralistic democracy, working with his opponents (who could include Republicans), in a system which works on compromise but can be slowed immeasurably by foot dragging foes and critics, people not unknown inside the Beltway. I hope he learns fast.

But, we are facing Donald Trump’s inauguration and four years of his presidency. Since I can’t/won’t wish ill fortune on him, what do I do and what do I say/write?

Using how I blogged and treated President Obama will be my template. I will criticize Trump when I think he’s wrong and praise him when I think he makes the right decision, in the same manner I criticized Obama’s foreign policy and his tentative steps domestically.

That will take a lot for me, since I am heavily inclined not to trust the ‘Donald Trump type” and I certainly don’t trust the people the President-elect has around him. 

But, I have to give him a chance to rise above them and rise above some of his campaign arguments.

So, my mind is open, but leaning skeptically.

One note that’s disconcerting, already, and that is the GOP lobbying and money world voracious efforts to integrate itself and run Trump’s transition and personnel team. That crowd has been shutout of political jobs in DC for eight years, but still managed to achieve a lot by grindingly lobbying the BHO administration and working with the Republican Congress to secure other victories.

Now, they’re just trying to find federal jobs for themselves and/or their friends where, inevitably and invariably, they will try to influence future decisions about their previous/current employers and/or their own ongoing issue responsibilities, if they, personally, don’t join the Trump Admin.

See seamy story below from the Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/donors-and-lobbyists-already-shaping-trumps-drain-the-swamp-administration/2016/11/11/d1c13704-a828-11e6-ba59-a7d93165c6d4_story.html?tid=a_inl

As I have written before Leftists are lazy and wobbly; this crew of Conservatives is very much into breaking glass, taking prisoners, destruction of Obama legacies, and busting other policies they find abhorrent, women’s health rights, climate control, environmental regulation, fossil fuel development limitations, etc.

Let’s see how much President Trump wants to or can control his new executive shock troops and, hopefully, rise above them.

What “Trump transition progress”  I’ve seen so far—especially the people handling major areas and issues---looks very “old hands and  same-o, same-o,” an approach that doesn’t augur well for Donald Trump’s promise “to clean out the DC Swamp.” 

Instead it appears Trump's employing the very Washington swamp denizens and residents—replacing Republican hacks for Democrat hacks--which he asserted not do.

So, I am not sure what his current implementation portends?

It’s one of those consequential details I pointed out early that a new President can’t just fob off, as Trump now has done twice first with Chris Christie (who, finally, will lose weight if he serves NJ jail time) and now his VP-elect Mike Pence.

The Democrats—under Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) with their 48 seats—still can clog the Senate process, much as Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) vowed in 2009, when he announced that his GOP Senators would “oppose anything Obama is for” and try and make BHO a one term President.

For Minority Leader Schumer, that’s one fresh and ugly precedent for you to consider.

I just hope Democrats won’t be too quick to sing "Kumbaya" with the GOP, since the other side seldom if ever did.

Some post-election black humor

 Alexandra Petri in the Washington Post, is fast becoming my favorite contemporary acerbic writer.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2016/11/11/the-five-stages-of-trump-grief/

The Donald, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac 

The GSE community was much in a happy twitter last week as the stock market, surprisingly, reacted favorably to the Trump election and Fannie and Freddie stock, specifically, jumped on thin reports of favorable treatment by the new President.

Hold on folks, let’s try walking before we run…too far.

As you know on the GSEs, I’ve written that I think Trump would side with the big money interests and support doing away with Fannie and Freddie in some new arrangement. 

Nothing Mr. Trump has said or done since winning on Nov. 8 has altered my opinion.

The near term F&F fate still is with the courts, as Judge Sweeney and the appeals judges in the Lamberth case, as well as the Delaware court likely will voice major GSE opinions before the new President or his spokesmen/women.

(Maybe with the election past us, we’ll get a decision one of these Tuesdays or Fridays from the appeals court?)

The GSE good news story last week was all about Donald Trump’s personal relationship with Fairholme's Bruce Berkowitz, investor Carl Icahn, and Wall Street investment guru John Paulson, throwing in some late week positive comments from Bill Ackman to the effect that the Trump team will fix the F&F issue and return them to operational function as private companies within a year.

That would be wonderful news---if it happens.

Remember, President Obama had lots of friends (who were consistent voters), indeed a nation of African American and Hispanic citizens--who relied on the GSEs to support their homeownership aspirations--and then BHO did nothing but stymy those hopes with his “kill the GSE” efforts. Worse he agreed to hijack their resources under Treasury’s “2012 sweep.”

The GSEs are nowhere near the “Top 20” matters facing the new Trump White House. He has lots of other worries/priorities.

That is not to say that he won’t, ultimately, help F&F, but—IMO-- it ain’t happening quickly or based alone on searching through last week’s relationship goat entrails we perused.

The Washington DC political reality is that the GSEs always have been and will be about partisan politics. Resisting the GSEs resurrection, to something akin to what they were, is formidable array of opponents.

President-elect Trump might have to choose between these roster sides.

Likely future good GSE guys:

--John Paulson

--Carl Icahn

--Bruce Berkowitz

--Bill Ackman (?)

--the Community Mortgage Lenders, Independent Bankers, a variety of civil   rights and social action groups

--scattered GSE investors, bloggers/communicators ("the real" Tim Howard)

Definite bad GSE Guys:

-- GOP’s anti-GSE presidential platform language

--Nation’s largest and most powerful financial institutions

--The entire GOP leadership in both houses, with Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and HBC Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex), leading the anti-GSE crusade

--Think tanks on the Right, AEI, Heritage, Cato, etc.

--The Wall Street Journal and other media

--Corker’s good friends/allies at the Realtors, Homebuilders, Mortgage Bankers, Financial Services Roundtable, American Bankers Association, etc. etc.

(Speaking of anti’s, while they’ll still be skulking around, I won’t miss the likes of Gene Sperling, Gary Gensler, Jim Parrott, Mike Stegman, Antonio Weiss, and a few other anti-GSE Obama/HRC supporters.)

For Trump to remove GSE constraints, the new President would have to oppose that hulking GSE opposing array, a task for which he might not be tough enough, especially because he’ll need those same folks' congressional support on so many other issues from healthcare, immigration, jobs, the Wall,  and dealing with Iran, Syria, China and the Middle East, etc. etc.

Prudence suggests pro-GSE types could be happy under the new President, but I think we need to wait until we see more, i.e. the actual fire in Trump’s cave, not the shadows of same (as I tried patiently to explain that Plato  allegory to one of my blog critics last week).

Maloni, 11-14-2016

Happy birthday to me, yesterday; not saying I am old, 

but--having now seen both in action--I can tell you that Donald Trump is no Abraham Lincoln. ;-)

Presidential Election Final Blog

A Trump Presidency???

Relative to my deep feelings, I have stayed remarkably quiet about a possible Trump’s presidency (although some of my readers have asked me to take their names from the blog mailing list, because they felt I wasn’t fair to their candidate). So be that.

No matter which candidate wins next week, close to half the nation’s voters will abhor the new President. We’ll see if the loser seeks to heal or hurt.

With a Clinton win, one side one side will cheer with relief, while the other goes antediluvian hateful. (I let you figure out which will do what?)

But, if Donald Trump wins, what would he do and what types of people, would a President Trump employ with the 4000 political appointments each President gets?

This is a key to his Admin’s success, since despite what he thinks, he can’t make every meaningful  decision and will need lots of support, efficiency and good communication,  especially since, reportedly, he doesn’t delegate well and likes to “let Trump be Trump” managing himself most major decisions. That will be a major problem for POTUS Trump.

His agenda, based on his campaign? Not major or demanding (Maloni said sarcastically.)

OK, he’s promised to repeal Obamacare (risking the health insurance of millions of Americans who least can afford it) and usher in some new scheme which will light up the eyes and appetites of all insurance and healthcare firms engaged in producing medicines and medications. No big deal there, should be a cinch.

He has promised to remove the criminal element among 11 million illegal US residents, primarily the “bad Hombres” (maybe one--above--and two are related?) and simultaneously fix the US immigration system, with a special eye toward keeping out Muslims whom he feels don’t respect/like the US enough and are a threats to our national safety. Ethnic or racial immigration profiling? This won’t take long or meet any opposition in Congress.

Trump has vowed to clean up our inner cities and provide jobs, good education, crime free neighborhoods, and more to minority Americans, primarily Black and Hispanics who he doesn’t forcibly remove from our communities. Should be easy since we’ve only spent about $50 Trillion trying to do the same thing, but DT says he has the answers.

He has sworn to bust up and renegotiate if every bad foreign trade “deal” replacing it with a better deal. Based on his campaign, there’s not one trade deal he won’t try and “bust up.”

He has asserted, he would charge our foreign allies, i.e. Japan, South Korean, Germany, much of Europe, etc. more cash for the protection of the US military strength in Europe and Asia, and if they don’t pay up, he might drop participation in those multi-decade security arrangements, which themselves produce international commerce.

He sworn to cut taxes significantly for the very wealthy whom he considers more worthy and deserving, because his economists, likely from the US Chamber or the equivalent, have told him that “trickle down” approach works—despite what history shows--and really is not trickle down to the mass of American who won’t benefit as grandly, i.e. it’s called feeding the cows to feed the crows?

He’s determined to break the back of ISIS (he has a plan here, because he “knows ISIS better than the generals”), Iran, North Korea, Chinese opportunism (which, as a businessman, he regularly availed himself), Iraq, and Syria. Attack without warning parts of the Middle East where we have enemies but which he laments know our every move in advance. Good luck, DT, after you ripped all those US military oficers in your campaign.

He also will secure/defend for his presidential lifetime everything related to Israel.

Trump will cooperate with his good friend and ally Vladimir Putin to bring world peace and prosperity to a whole new era of Russian thugs, I mean, citizens and oligarchs. See Trump’s buddy Jim Comey’s participation—below--or lack thereof.

Comey is no profile in courage

This is the FBI Director, bravely willing to step into the presidential election but not willing to speak against Vladimir Putin??? See the article below from Thursday’s Washington Post.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/ct-fbi-director-james-comey-russia-hacks-20161101-story.html

Am I the only one who sees he refused to support the finding that Russia hacked US websites, because his FBI wasn’t the source of the intel??? Talk about silo thinking.

Does anyone in the Trump posse not like the Russians and are afraid to cross them? 

Here’s my analysis of Comey. If HRC wins, he’s gone; if Trump wins, he’ll want to run a few victory laps and bask in DT’s sun, then, quickly, leave to cash in on those inevitable major GOP employment opportunities.

Yes, I think President Donald Trump will be a disaster, unable and unwilling to truly clean out Washington’s Aegean Stables, despite all of his rhetoric.

Please note that George W. Bush’s NSA and CIA Director, Michael Hayden, yesterday, in an article today called Trump, “Russia’s useful fool.”

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Post-blog publication news, added at 6:30 PM, 11-4-16:

For all of you lamenting that I was hard on Comey and the FBI for pissing on the Clinton campaign, look at Rudy Giuliani's "FBI leak" admission today and then ask yourself, "Did the FBI interfere politically in the Trump-Clinton presidential election?"

And what's that say about those FBI agents, their organization, and the rule of law,  if the misogynist, racist, immigrant hating liar, is their preferred presidential choice and they decided to play political judge and jury? And you wonder why some minorities don't trust law enforcement?


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rudy-giuliani-fbi-clinton-emails_us_581c9e3fe4b0e80b02c93d6b

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…Back to the Trump Presidency

The Donald claims he will throttle Wall Street and those big bad businesses, to which he wants to give massive tax cuts; yet I’ve already predicted he would go along with the big bank plan to do away with Fannie and Freddie and replace it with something that the GOP,  Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) NAHB, NAR, and MBA like better. No chaos or confusion there, either.

DT insists he will get rid of the EPA, Department of Education, Consumer Finance Protection Board and “two thirds” of all US regulations which he believes inhibits the US economic engine (and his friends on Wall Street whom he simultaneously is throttling and giving huge tax breaks)..

Oh and he would find time to fix the “rotten US education system” and do away with Planned Parenthood, any form of abortion  assistance, and all opposition to the “Second Amendment,” which he’s told us defies Constitutional interpretation and means every household can have its own arsenal.

He will name strict constitutionalists to the SCOTUS, like Antonia Scalia, who died sleeping at the Texas ranch of a rich businessman who hosted parties for the conservative elite.

Don hasn’t mentioned what he would do with his own businesses, except let his children run them, which means anyone doing business with any of the Trump enterprises will be feeding income to President Trump or DT’s version of “pay to play.”

Last but not least, after all of this, he promises to cut the US deficit. But, don’t ask him how, since he has a plan, doesn’t want to share it yet, but he’s guaranteed us it will be “fabulous.”

That should do it for first 90 days, but in his next three months……..

Now you know why he’ll need so much political help, especially when lots of GOP Senators and Congressmen support the status quo and benefit the federal programs and policies he plans to axe. But he’s “The Donald,” he can do whatever he wants, since now he is more than a TV star.

He can grab them by their “whatevers.”

Really America, really?? You would vote for this misanthrope as the leader of the western world?

Hillary’s machinations sometimes rub many of her supporters the wrong way, me included.

But Trump—based on all that we know about him, largely how he’s presented himself during his campaign--would be a walking destructive cyclone, capable of disrupting more than the ways of sleepy arrogant Washington DC.

Before anyone screams, “Hillary will do the same thing.”

Clinton knows the limits of presidential power and the need for cooperation in a divided government and that she must negotiate with Republicans to achieve any success, which Trump doesn’t know D’s because he’s never done it and will be scornful of a minority party. If he wins, he’s just the President, not a King or Emperor and there’s a difference, as long as he tries to maintain a democracy, but then, he’s “The Donald.”

I think HRC’s four thousands political appointees will be more constructive and less destructive than Trump’s.

The Left is sometimes clumsy and predictably squishy, but the organized Right is scary violent and warms to the concept of armed domestic rebellion and dealing with its enemies with brick bats and broken glass, think Brown Shirts. (See Luke O’Brien in Huffington Post, link below.)

http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/alt-right/

You can't make this stuff up, but this week (again, read story above) the KKK newspaper endorsed Trump--or "Russia's useful fool"; just saying’.

A leopard can’t change its spots and Donald Trump has been a leopard all of his life; there is no Trump 2.0. Don’t welcome this fox into the American chicken coop. We all will regret it.

Maloni, 11-4-2016