#Biden Finally Gets Something Right

[Kurt Nicklas]

{Of course there will be international crises if Hussein is elected.
The dictators of the
world know an inexperienced patsy when they see one. }


Biden predicts international crisis if elected - McCain reacts
By Jimmy Orr | 10.21.08
http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2008/10/21/biden-predicts-international-crisis-if-elected-mccain-reacts/

What do you do when Joe Biden guarantees an international crisis if
running mate Barack Obama is elected to the presidency? If you’re the
McCain team you jump on it.

Just like when a running back sees an opening, he takes it. And if
he’s powerful enough — think Earl Campbell back in his glory days or
Chris Berman favorite Mike Alstott or a healthy Ladainian Tomlinson —
he can take that small opening, throw off defenders and cause some
damage.

Try as they may, Team McCain doesn’t have Earl Campbell’s 1978 legs
right now. And McCain’s offensive line? They’re not the Hogs. They
best they can do is to look for some mistake, some gaffe, some
blunder.

Joe the Senator

Enter Joe Biden.

Yesterday, the Republican camp was trying to score some points from
speeches the Delaware Senator gave on Sunday where he guaranteed an
international crisis if the Obama-Biden ticket is elected.

“Mark my words: It will not be six months before the world tests
Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy,” Biden told the crowd. “The
world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator
president of the United States of America. Watch, we’re going to have
an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of
this guy.”

“He’s going to have to make some really tough - I don’t know what the
decision’s going to be, but I promise you it will occur. As a student
of history and having served with seven presidents, I guarantee you
it’s going to happen,” he said.

Rapid response

The McCain communications team jumped - emailing Biden’s remarks
around, along with McCain’s prepared response and an announcement of a
conference call led by Rudy Giuiliani to help frame the issue.

Speaking to a crowd in Belton, Mo., McCain riffed on Biden’s remarks,
saying that now is not the time for on-the job-training.

“The next President won’t have time to get used to the office,” McCain
said. “We face many challenges here at home, and many enemies abroad
in this dangerous world. If Senator Obama is elected, Senator Biden
said, we will have an international crisis to test America’s new
president. We don’t want a president who invites testing from the
world at a time when our economy is in crisis and Americans are
already fighting in two wars.”

“What is more troubling is that Senator Biden told their campaign
donors that when that crisis hits, they would have to stand with them
because it wouldn’t be apparent that Senator Obama would have the
right response,” McCain added.

“Forget apparent,” he continued. “Senator Obama won’t have the right
response, and we know that because we’ve seen the wrong response from
him over and over during this campaign. He opposed the surge strategy
that is bringing us victory in Iraq and will bring us victory in
Afghanistan.”

Hype

Much to do about nothing? Yes, according to the Obama-Biden team.
Presidents are always tested. Biden was just stating a fact.

“Sen. Biden was making it clear that history has shown presidents face
challenges starting on day one, and with our nation fighting two wars
and 21st century threats abroad, we know that we need steady
leadership in tumultuous times, not the erratic lurching and stubborn
ideology of John McCain,” said Biden spokesman David Wade.

Sticky

With two weeks to go, will this stick? Who knows. At this point, you
throw anything at the wall. If it doesn’t stick, you throw something
else.

In the past, however, Team McCain would have had at least a web ad up
the morning after calling attention to a perceived gaffe. No ad yet.
It’s still early.

[Kurt Lochner]

Post by Kurt Nicklas
Of course there will be international crises

There already is, owing to failed economic policies and
"neoconservative" political ideologies of the W. Bush
administration..

Now, the question is, who's gonna solve it?

It certainly isn't going to be you right-wing retards babbling
and foaming at the mouth about Clinton or Obama, is it?

And, here's what was actually said..

"Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis,
a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

--So stick it in your innuendo, Dickless..

[Eddie Haskell]

Post by Kurt Lochner

Post by Kurt Nicklas
Of course there will be international crises

There already is, owing to failed economic policies and
"neoconservative" political ideologies of the W. Bush
administration..

Brain-dead parroting pull-string doll..


"I think the responsibility the Democrats have may rest more in resisting
any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was President to
put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."

-Bill Clinton

''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any
kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of
Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee.
''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on
these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

-------------------------------------------------------------

Minorities' Home Ownership Booms Under Clinton but Still Lags Whites'

By Ronald Brownstein

May 31, 1999

It's one of the hidden success stories of the Clinton era. In the great
housing boom of the 1990s, black and Latino homeownership has surged to the
highest level ever recorded.

<snip>

All of this suggests that Clinton's efforts to increase minority access to
loans and capital also have spurred this decade's gains. Under Clinton, bank
regulators have breathed the first real life into enforcement of the
Community Reinvestment Act, a 20-year-old statute meant to combat
"redlining" by requiring banks to serve their low-income communities. The
administration also has sent a clear message by stiffening enforcement of
the fair housing and fair lending laws. The bottom line: Between 1993 and
1997, home loans grew by 72% to blacks and by 45% to Latinos, far faster
than the total growth rate.

<snip>

In 1992, Congress mandated that Fannie and Freddie increase their purchases
of mortgages for low-income and medium-income borrowers.

<snip>

The top priority may be to ask more of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two
companies are now required to devote 42% of their portfolios to loans for
low- and moderate-income borrowers; HUD, which has the authority to set the
targets, is poised to propose an increase this summer. Although Fannie Mae
actually has exceeded its target since 1994, it is resisting any hike. It
argues that a higher target would only produce more loan defaults by
pressuring banks to accept unsafe borrowers. HUD says Fannie Mae is
resisting more low-income loans because they are less profitable.

http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/31/news/mn-42807

---------------------------------------------------------
The New York Times

September 11, 2003

New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae

By STEPHEN LABATON

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory
overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a
decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency
would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the
two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to
set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would
exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine
whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning
portfolios.

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie
Mae and Freddie Mac -- which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in
outstanding debt -- is broken. A report by outside investigators in July
concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors,
and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising
interest rates.

''There is a general recognition that the supervisory system for
housing-related government-sponsored enterprises neither has the tools, nor
the stature, to deal effectively with the current size, complexity and
importance of these enterprises,'' Treasury Secretary John W. Snow told the
House Financial Services Committee in an appearance with Housing Secretary
Mel Martinez, who also backed the plan.

Mr. Snow said that Congress should eliminate the power of the president to
appoint directors to the companies, a sign that the administration is less
concerned about the perks of patronage than it is about the potential
political problems associated with any new difficulties arising at the
companies.

The administration's proposal, which was endorsed in large part today by
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, would not repeal the significant government
subsidies granted to the two companies. And it does not alter the implicit
guarantee that Washington will bail the companies out if they run into
financial difficulty; that perception enables them to issue debt at
significantly lower rates than their competitors. Nor would it remove the
companies' exemptions from taxes and antifraud provisions of federal
securities laws.

The proposal is the opening act in one of the biggest and most significant
lobbying battles of the Congressional session.

After the hearing, Representative Michael G. Oxley, chairman of the
Financial Services Committee, and Senator Richard Shelby, chairman of the
Senate Banking Committee, announced their intention to draft legislation
based on the administration's proposal. Industry executives said Congress
could complete action on legislation before leaving for recess in the fall.

''The current regulator does not have the tools, or the mandate, to
adequately regulate these enterprises,'' Mr. Oxley said at the hearing. ''We
have seen in recent months that mismanagement and questionable accounting
practices went largely unnoticed by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise
Oversight,'' the independent agency that now regulates the companies.

''These irregularities, which have been going on for several years, should
have been detected earlier by the regulator,'' he added.

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, which is part of the
Department of Housing and Urban Development, was created by Congress in 1992
after the bailout of the savings and loan industry and concerns about
regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which buy mortgages from lenders
and repackage them as securities or hold them in their own portfolios.

At the time, the companies and their allies beat back efforts for tougher
oversight by the Treasury Department, the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation or the Federal Reserve. Supporters of the companies said efforts
to regulate the lenders tightly under those agencies might diminish their
ability to finance loans for lower-income families. This year, however, the
chances of passing legislation to tighten the oversight are better than in
the past.

Reflecting the changing political climate, both Fannie Mae and its leading
rivals applauded the administration's package. The support from Fannie Mae
came after a round of discussions between it and the administration and
assurances from the Treasury that it would not seek to change the company's
mission.

After those assurances, Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chief executive,
endorsed the shift of regulatory oversight to the Treasury Department, as
well as other elements of the plan.

''We welcome the administration's approach outlined today,'' Mr. Raines
said. The company opposes some smaller elements of the package, like one
that eliminates the authority of the president to appoint 5 of the company's
18 board members.

Company executives said that the company preferred having the president
select some directors. The company is also likely to lobby against the
efforts that give regulators too much authority to approve its products.

Freddie Mac, whose accounting is under investigation by the Securities and
Exchange Commission and a United States attorney in Virginia, issued a
statement calling the administration plan a ''responsible proposal.''

The stocks of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae fell while the prices of their
bonds generally rose. Shares of Freddie Mac fell $2.04, or 3.7 percent, to
$53.40, while Fannie Mae was down $1.62, or 2.4 percent, to $66.74. The
price of a Fannie Mae bond due in March 2013 rose to 97.337 from 96.525.Its
yield fell to 4.726 percent from 4.835 percent on Tuesday.

Fannie Mae, which was previously known as the Federal National Mortgage
Association, and Freddie Mac, which was the Federal Home Loan Mortgage
Corporation, have been criticized by rivals for exerting too much influence
over their regulators.

''The regulator has not only been outmanned, it has been outlobbied,'' said
Representative Richard H. Baker, the Louisiana Republican who has proposed
legislation similar to the administration proposal and who leads a
subcommittee that oversees the companies. ''Being underfunded does not
explain how a glowing report of Freddie's operations was released only hours
before the managerial upheaval that followed. This is not world-class
regulatory work.''

Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a
bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National
Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that
tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to
financing low-income and affordable housing.

''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any
kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of
Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee.
''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on
these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.

''I don't see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something
from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power
of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,'' Mr. Watt
said.

http://tinyurl.com/6lp5qu

-Eddie Haskell

[Kurt Lochner]

Post by Eddie Haskell

Post by Kurt Lochner

Post by Kurt Nicklas
Of course there will be international crises

There already is, owing to failed economic policies and
"neoconservative" political ideologies of the W. Bush
administration..
Now, the question is, who's gonna solve it?
It certainly isn't going to be you right-wing retards babbling
and foaming at the mouth about Clinton or Obama, is it?
And, here's what was actually said..
"Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis,
a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."
--So stick it in your innuendo, Dickless..

Brain-dead parroting pull-string doll..

Keep telling on yourself..

--Evasion noted, and laughed at, again..

[Leo Marx]

"a generated crisis"

This could also come from the Reich Wing extremist in the U.S..

JAM