And we wonder why nothing ever gets fixed.
Here's a quick look into the three former Fannie Mae executives who brought down Wall Street...and where they are now!
Franklin Raines was a Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Fannie Mae. Raines was forced to retire from his position with Fannie Mae when auditing discovered severe irregularities in Fannie Mae's accounting activities. At the time of his departure The Wall Street Journal noted, "Raines, who long defended the company's accounting despite mounting evidence that it wasn't proper, issued a statement late Tuesday conceding that "mistakes were made" and saying he would assume responsibility as he had earlier promised. News reports indicate the company was under growing pressure from regulators to shake up its management in the wake of findings that the company's books ran afoul of generally accepted accounting principles for four years." Fannie Mae had to reduce its surplus by $9 billion.
Raines left with a "golden parachute valued at $240 Million in benefits. The Government filed suit against Raines when the depth of the accounting scandal became clear.http://housingdoom.com/2006/12/18/Fannie-charges/ . The Government noted, "The 101 charges reveal how the individuals improperly manipulated earnings to maximize their bonuses, while knowingly neglecting accounting systems and internal controls, misapplying over twenty accounting principles and misleading the regulator and the public. The Notice explains how they submitted six years of misleading and inaccurate accounting statements and inaccurate capital reports that enabled them to grow Fannie Mae in an unsafe and unsound manner." These charges were made in 2006. The Court ordered Raines to return $50 Million Dollars he received in bonuses based on the miss-stated Fannie Mae profits.
Net windfall . . . $190 million!
Tim Howard - Was the Chief Financial Officer of Fannie Mae. Howard "was a strong internal proponent of using accounting strategies that would ensure a "stable pattern of earnings" at Fannie. In everyday English - he was cooking the books. The Government Investigation determined that, "Chief Financial Officer, Tim Howard, failed to provide adequate oversight to key control and reporting functions within Fannie Mae,"
On June 16, 2006, Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., asked the Justice Department to investigate his allegations that two former Fannie Mae executives lied to Congress in October 2004 when they denied manipulating the mortgage-finance giant's income statement to achieve management pay bonuses. Investigations by federal regulators and the company's board of directors since concluded that management did manipulate 1998 earnings to trigger bonuses. Raines and Howard resigned under pressure in late 2004.
Howard's Golden Parachute was estimated at $20 Million!
Jim Johnson - A former executive at Lehman Brothers and who was later forced from his position as Fannie Mae CEO. A look at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's May 2006 report on mismanagement and corruption inside Fannie Mae, and you'll see some interesting things about Johnson. Investigators found that Fannie Mae had hidden a substantial amount of Johnson's 1998 compensation from the public, reporting that it was between $6 million and $7 million when it fact it was $21 million." Johnson is currently under investigation for taking illegal loans from Countrywide while serving as CEO of Fannie Mae.
Johnson's Golden Parachute was estimated at $28 Million.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
FRANKLIN RAINES? Raines works for the Obama Campaign as his Chief Economic Advisor.
TIM HOWARD? Howard is a Chief Economic Advisor to Obama under Franklin Raines.
JIM JOHNSON? Johnson was hired as a Senior Obama Finance Advisor and was selected to run Obama's Vice Presidential Search Committee.
Now add in the Solyndra and Fast & Furious scandals; and the authorization delays of the Canadian Pipeline project that would have provided at LEAST 150K good paying jobs in at least 4 states...
Chicago Machine Politics, Anyone?!?
We are in serious trouble here folks.
2012 is THE most important election in our nations history; it will determine whether or not we remain a free and viable country, or fall into an ever quickening downward spiral into insolvency and chaos.
Yeah, I KNOW, I've been AWOL from writing for far too long...Life happens and there was just nothing I really had to spout off about...till now.
Seems that there is a certain Professor of Law (Constitutional Law at that !) at Suffolk University School of Law, one Michael Avery by name, that seems to think that any support shown for our Armed Forces is, in his words, "not particularly rational in today's world.", and "shameful"
The University organization had sent out an E-mail encouraging members of the Univ. community to send "care packages" to the troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And not only does he think it is shameful to support the troops; he also is offended by the fact that the University displays an over-sized American flag in it's atrium
This is the E-mail the Professor wrote in response:
I think it is shameful that it is perceived as legitimate to solicit in an academic institution for support for men and women who have gone overseas to kill other human beings. I understand that there is a residual sympathy for service members, perhaps engendered by support for troops in World War II, or perhaps from when there was a draft and people with few resources to resist were involuntarily sent to battle. That sympathy is not particularly rational in today's world, however.
The United States may well be the most war prone country in the history of civilization. We have been at war two years out of three since the Cold War ended. We have 700 overseas military bases. What other country has any? In the last ten years we have squandered hundreds of billions of dollars in unnecessary foreign invasions. Those are dollars that could have been used for people who are losing their homes due to the economic collapse, for education, to repair our infrastructure, or for any of a thousand better purposes than making war. And of course those hundreds of billions of dollars have gone for death and destruction.
Perhaps some of my colleagues will consider this to be an inappropriate political statement. But of course the solicitation email was a political statement, although cast as support for student activities. The politics of that solicitation are that war is legitimate, perhaps inevitable, and that patriotic Americans should get behind our troops.
We need to be more mindful of what message we are sending as a school. Since Sept. 11 we have had perhaps the largest flag in New England hanging in our atrium. This is not a politically neutral act. Excessive patriotic zeal is a hallmark of national security states. It permits, indeed encourages, excesses in the name of national security, as we saw during the Bush administration, and which continue during the Obama administration.
Why do we continue to have this oversized flag in our lobby? Why are we sending support to the military instead of Americans who are losing their homes, malnourished, unable to get necessary medical care, and suffering from other consequences of poverty? As a university community, we should debate these questions, not remain on automatic pilot in support of the war agenda.
Well, Professor Avery, I think it's shameful that parents and students are paying excessive amounts of money to be indoctrinated by the likes of you.
YOU are part of what has gone wrong in this great country we share.
It's one thing to disagree with a war, a political policy or program; it's quite another matter to excoriate those men and women that choose to lay their lives on the line every single day in defense of the Principles that are America.
Prof. Avery is symptomatic of what passes as higher education these days; it's no wonder we have the progeny of such poor educational system protesting in major cities all across America without any clear agenda other than "we hate rich people", and "poor us, give we have everything we want, right now (w/o working for it, of course)".
Your Thoughts?