Dose them again, Doctor

GSE Skeptics and Liars need a fact-

suppository, maybe two or more!

There always will be those skeptics who reject convention and balk at what a majority believe/think.

We’re all aware of  “Deniers,” individuals and groups, who—despite solid evidence—continue to disbelieve and loudly say that certain events never existed or have been greatly distorted by experts and historical accounts.

Evil deniers

My “evil denier #1” are “Holocaust deniers, who try and sugar coat Nazi Germany and Hitler’s Third Reich, swearing that 6,000,000 Jewish deaths in WWII have been fabricated and that nothing of the sort happened at the hands of the Nazis. They have a secondary agenda to glorify Hitler’s Germany and vilify Jews. From Wikipedia

“Holocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in the Holocaust during World War II.^[1] Holocaust deniers claim that Nazi Germany's Final Solution was aimed only at deporting Jews from the Reich but that it did not include the extermination of Jews; that Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas chambers to mass murder Jews; or that the actual number of Jews killed was significantly lower than the historically accepted figure of 5 to 6 million, typically around a tenth of that figure.^[2][3][4] Because Holocaust denial is a common facet of certain racist propaganda, it is considered a serious societal problem in many places where it occurs and is illegal in several European countries and Israel

Just plain dumb deniers

There also is those who deny the US ever landed successfully on the moon and all of those astronaut pictures, flags, and videos were shot on a movie set somewhere in Hollywood or Houston, Texas.

This group should wear tinfoil hats because they defy our history books, various Administrations and Presidents, famous women and men who were part of the NASA moon landings, science, etc. etc.

These “flat Earthers” are addled and I feel sorry for them and their progeny.

Again, from Wikipedia:

 “Various groups and individuals have made claims since the mid-1970s that NASA and others knowingly misled the public into believing the landings happened, by manufacturing, tampering with, or destroying evidence including photos, telemetry tapes, radio and TV transmissions, Moon rock samples, and even killing some key witnesses.

Naïve deniers

My favorite example (close to home) is the majority in the US--BUT NOT I-- who still will not consider, despite thousands and thousands of sightings—the possible existence of BigFoot (Sasquatch), UFOs, and the Loch Ness Monster.

C’mon folks what does it take? Witnesses to the existence of all three—US commercial and military pilots, public officials, members of the clergy, and lots of plain old folks—have encountered these phenomena and all it takes is for one (or three, one per phenomenon) to be accurate and where does that put the doubters?

                   

Fannie and Freddie dissemblers, fabricators, deniers—become hoodwinkers

As socially and intellectually regrettable as those aforementioned “deniers” are, there is a newer group—found among the Conservative “think tanks” (oxymoron?!), big banks, reactionary media, and the Republican Party--I’ll call them “GSE deniers,” who despite the work/proof of federal commissions, agencies, and prominent news people--but not enough public officials or Senators and Congresspeople—this element is bound/wedded to twisting and misrepresenting the facts that Fannie and Freddie ever were effective or successfully carried out their congressional mission to provide massive amounts of mortgage finance to low, moderate, and middle-income families and individuals in every corner of the nation in good economic times and bad.

They blather variations of the same inaccurate memes (see below), while supporting TBTF big bank successors to the GSEs, despite the latter having a more horrible mortgage abuse history than any of the actual GSE losses and far more disqualifying than anything the GSEs have done given the financial behemoths’ desire to control the nation’s mortgage market, and—here’s the clincher for me—the big banks have far grander federal subsidies than the GSEs every enjoyed.

Anti-GSE canards:

--guaranteed by the government, NO!

--never served low-income families and minority, NO!

--private gains, public losses, NO!

--financed mostly “subprime”, NO!

--caused the 2008 financial meltdown, NO!

Anti-GSE proponents fall back on the “Fannie/Freddie bad business model,” ignoring that format—with the GSEs still in unprecedented virtual operational handcuffs—has paid back the Treasury more than $280 Billion in just the past five years, and still is backing about 50% of all outstanding US mortgages, with infinitesimal mortgage credit losses in the past 10 years, save a few caused by bizarre forced Treasury accounting and its consequences applied to Fannie and Freddie. As I pointed out last week, bank mortgage losses have been 16 times those of the GSEs as measured in the last set of Treasury (Dodd-Frank required) capital stress tests.

My greatest lament is that unlike the Holocaust and moon landing anti-celebrants, the GSE crowd seems to have carried the day in Washington and manifestations of their distortions arise consistently despite the smaller number of voices and platforms that stand in opposition.

The anti-GSE memes they fire off have surface appeal to the uninformed—which, once again, unfortunately, is most of the Washington policy audience—and impact them like sermons from the Mount.

Think of most of these policymakers—and some in the media--as large, constipated i.e. elephants and donkeys, with their internal blockages not allowing their brains to process GSE facts and keeping them dumb.

For ease and certainty, part of me wished I magically could reduce to suppository form the wisdom in Tim Howard’s blog and the many excellent arguments in the gaggle of GSE plaintiffs’ lawsuit against the US Treasury, and require the Congress and media to accept that relief in the most appropriate ways to heighten their fact bases and guarantee consumption of an accurate Fannie and Freddie history.

Those conditions could require a dozen doses or more of this purgatives to get through to some of the anti-GSE fanatics/hardheads and relieve their informational distress.

What whatever it takes……!

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Oh and then there is the “Orange Denier”:

--I hire the best people, i.e. Omarosa, Dr. Carson, Betsy DeVos, Scott Pruit, etc;

--My inaugural crowd was the biggest;

--Mexico is going to pay for my Wall;

--I'm the least racist person I know;

--People love my tariffs, they and I have gotten great reviews;

--I want a parade but DC says it costs too much

Maloni, 8-19-2018

(Thanks to Doc. Cartoon for the artwork assist!)