Obama in China as beggar-in-chief

He was constrained by their huge army and consumer base, and need for their cooperation on Iran and N. Korea. Not to mention Afghanistan and Pakistan.

They need us as much as we need them. There is a simple solution to them buying our debt and it is being addressed. The wealthy in this country have finally stepped up to the plate and have bought nearly a trillion dollars worth over the last year and need to continue to do so. The rest of us need to as well. We’re holding one bond we never plan on cashing as our meager contribution. The ability to get income tax refunds in the form of bonds is a good idea and will help a little as well. Other innovatiove ways to sell them are needed.

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Lettuce just hope his teleprompter was working.

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“…Obama, on the other hand, positively revels in The Great I Am.

“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,’’ he told campaign aides when he was running for the White House. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that . . . I’m a better political director than my political director.’’

At the start of his presidency, Obama seemed to content himself with the royal “we’’ – “We will build the roads and bridges. . . . We will restore science to its rightful place. . . . We will harness the sun and winds,’’ he declaimed at his inauguration.

But as the literary theorist Stanley Fish points out, “By the time of the address to the Congress on Feb. 24, the royal we [had] flowered into the naked ‘I’: ‘As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress.’ ‘I called for action.’ ‘I pushed for quick action.’ ‘I have told each of my Cabinet.’ ‘I’ve appointed a proven and aggressive inspector general.’ ’I refuse to let that happen.’ ’’ In his speech on the federal takeover of General Motors, Obama likewise found it necessary to use the first-person singular pronoun 34 times. (“Congress’’ he mentioned just once.)

At this rate, it won’t be long before the president’s ego is so inflated that it will require a ZIP code of its own…”

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The Chinese economy should experience the same boom/bust cycle of any new economy.

As capitalists, the Chinese make great commies. 90% of their billion plus population still live like refugees from a Ghengis Khan plunder-and-pillaging rampage, (and that’s during the boom years).

Worse, China is building a supernavy. With aircraft carriers so big they block out half the sky. With submarines so quiet, a dolphin couldn’t find them.

Steel yourself, America. Communism’s thinks the world is it’s Manifest Destiny. The Chinese have a long term view that they can rule the world ny adhering to their four cardinal principles.

The Four Cardinal Principles! (Two systems, one country).

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Geriatric Blunders

November 16th, 2009
9:23 am

You’re hallucinating! China has no desire to rule the world. They’ve experienced war, big time.

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“But he was constrained by his position as beggar-in-chief.”

—-> A significant portion of this is his (and his party’s) own doing. Stimulus, bailouts, cheap money etc.

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The bailouts were due to the BS policies of Chris Dodd(D- CT), Barney Frank(D- MA) related to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Bush tried to deal with this while dealing with Iraq…….

Don’t agree with invading Iraq, but at least it kept the terrorists busy there vs. here………. Seperate subject tho…………..

If you want to blame anyone for the mess that exists today, Bush is not the guy….. Its these two with their cronies who ran these companies that have been screwing us since Clinton made it ok for them to do it…….

How else did Barney Frank come to amass the forune he has? Purely by screwing the citizens of the U.S. Plain and simple. Chris Dodd? Same thing. When are they going to get their comupance? Not while Obama is in office thats for sure………

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Maybe while he’s there he could borrow a little more money so we can have duplicate government health care plans for children as Cynthia suggested yesterday. Oh, what the heck. Lets just have three plans in case someone falls through the crack. Just tax small businesses a few more percent and its no problem.

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Inmo,

“where did all the jobs go?”

Don’t worry. Obama has a plan. We will continue taxing small business owners until they start hiring.

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Are journalists playing favorites with some of the key political figures involved with regulatory oversight of U.S. financial markets?

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews launched several vitriolic attacks on the Republican Party on his Sept. 17, 2008, show, suggesting blame for Wall Street problems should be focused in a partisan way. However, he and other media have failed to thoroughly examine the Democratic side of the blame game.

Prominent Democrats ran Fannie Mae, the same government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) that donated campaign cash to top Democrats. And one of Fannie Mae’s main defenders in the House – Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., a recipient of more than $40,000 in campaign donations from Fannie since 1989 – was once romantically involved with a Fannie Mae executive.

The media coverage of Frank’s coziness with Fannie Mae and his pro-Fannie Mae stances has been lacking. Of the eight appearances Frank made on the three broadcasts networks between Jan. 1, 2008, and Sept. 21, 2008, none of his comments dealt with the potential conflicts of interest. Only six of the appearances dealt with the economy in general and two of those appearances, including an April 6, 2008 appearance on CBS’s “60 Minutes” were about his opposition to a manned mission to Mars.

Frank has argued that family life “should be fair game for campaign discussion,” wrote the Associated Press on Sept. 2. The comment was in reference to GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and her pregnant daughter. “They’re the ones that made an issue of her family,” the Massachusetts Democrat said to the AP.

The news media have covered the relationship in the past, but there have been no mentions since 2005, according to Nexis and despite the collapse of Fannie Mae. The July 3, 1998, Reliable Source column in The Washington Post reported Frank, who is openly gay, had a relationship with Herb Moses, an executive for the now-government controlled Fannie Mae. The column revealed the two had split up at the time but also said Frank was referring to Moses as his “spouse.” Another Washington Post report said Frank called Moses his “lover” and that the two were “still friends” after the breakup.

Frank was and remains a stalwart defender of Fannie Mae, which is now under FBI investigation along with its sister organization Freddie Mac, American International Group Inc. (NYSE:AIG) and Lehman Brothers (NYSE:LEH) – all recently participants in government bailouts. But Frank has derailed efforts to regulate the institution, as well as denying it posed any financial risk. Frank’s office has been unresponsive to efforts by the Business & Media Institute to comment on these potential conflicts of interest.

While the relationship reportedly ended 10 years ago, Frank was serving on the House Banking Committee the entire 10 years they were together. The committee is the primary House body which along with the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) has jurisdiction over the government-sponsored enterprises.

He has served on the committee since becoming a congressman in 1981 and became the ranking Democrat on the committee in 2003. He became chairman of the committee, now called the House Financial Services Committee, in 2007.

Moses was the assistant director for product initiatives at Fannie Mae and had been at the forefront of relaxing lending restrictions at the company for rural customers, according to the Feb. 23, 1998, issue of National Mortgage News (NMN).

“Herb Moses, who helped develop many of Fannie Mae’s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs, has left the mortgage industry,” Darryl Hicks wrote for NMN. “Mr. Moses – whose last day was Feb. 13 – spent the past seven years at Fannie Mae, most recently as director of housing initiatives. Over the course of time, he played an instrumental role in developing the company’s Title One and 203(k) home improvement lending programs.”

Hicks explained in his story how Moses orchestrated a collaborative effort between Fannie Mae and the Department of Agriculture.

“The Dartmouth grad also played a crucial role in brokering a relationship between Fannie Mae and the Department of Agriculture,” Hicks wrote. “This led to the creation of Fannie Mae’s rural housing program where the secondary marketing agency agreed to purchase small farm loans insured through the department.”

While Moses served at Fannie Mae and was Frank’s partner, Frank was actively working to support GSEs, according to several news outlets.

In 1991, Frank and former Rep. Joe Kennedy, D-Mass., lobbied for Fannie to soften rules on multi-family home mortgages although those dwellings showed a default rate twice that of single-family homes, according to the Nov. 22, 1991, Boston Globe.

BusinessWeek reported in its Nov. 14, 1994, issue that Fannie Mae called on Frank to exert his influence against a Housing & Urban Development proposal that would force the GSE to focus on minority and low-income buyers and police bias by lenders regardless of their location. Fannie Mae opposed HUD on the issue because it claimed doing so would “ignore the urban middle class.”

Moses left Fannie in 1998 to start his own pottery business. National Mortgage News called Moses a “mortgage guru” and said he developed “many of Fannie Mae’s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs. Moses ended his relationship with Frank just months after he left Fannie.

Even after the relationship ended, however, Frank was a staunch defender of Fannie Mae even as other experts suggested there were serious problems building in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

According to an article by Kathleen Day in the Oct. 8, 2003, Washington Post, Frank opposed giving the Bush administration the right to approve or disapprove business activities that “could pose risk to the taxpayers.” He told the Post he worried the Treasury Department “would sacrifice activities that are good for consumers in the name of lowering the companies’ market risks.”

Just a month before, Frank had aggressively thwarted reform efforts by the Bush administration. He told The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2003, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s problems were “exaggerated,” a gross miscalculation some five years later with costs estimated to be in the hundreds of billions.

“These two entities – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” Frank said to the Times. “The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Frank has also reaped campaign contribution benefits from Fannie Mae and its counterpart Freddie Mac. According a front page story in the Sept. 19, 2008, Investor’s Business Daily by Terry Jones, Frank has received $40,100 in campaign cash over the past two decades from the GSEs.

Frank is ranked 16th on a list that includes both houses of Congress and fifth among his colleagues in the House. According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics’ OpenSecrets.org, political action committees financed by both Freddie and Fannie have contributed $3,017,797 to members of Congress since 1989. And according to the July 16 issue of Politico, the two entities have spent a whopping $200 million to buy influence – including not only campaign donations to members of Congress, but also presidential campaigns and lobbying efforts.

In a July 23 op-ed, Wall Street Journal Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot put the blame for the GSEs’ collapse firmly on the members of the liberal establishment who took money from Freddie and Fannie. “Fan and Fred also couldn’t prosper for as long as they have without the support of the political left… This includes Mr. Frank and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) on Capitol Hill, as well as Mr. [Paul] Krugman and the Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein in the press.”

Frank was asked by CNN’s John Roberts on the Sept. 22, 2008 “American Morning” about this and his opposition to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Originally, he claimed he didn’t think the two GSEs were facing any problems when the issue first surfaced in 2003. He instead blamed the Republican-controlled Congress for their ultimate fall, failing to mention his friendly relationship with Fannie Mae and the contributions it had made to his campaign over the years.

“Yes, I did not think we were facing a crisis in 2003, but that didn’t mean we didn’t have to have reform,” an animated Frank said when confronted with the question. “Here’s the deal, the Republicans controlled Congress from 1995 through 2006. They did zero to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

However, on Sept. 17, 2008, former Bush administration Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove elaborated on the Bush administration’s efforts to curb abuses at the two GSEs in 2003. He told Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes” that Frank was among the most aggressive opponents of White House attempts to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“All of this bad stuff on Wall Street happened because people got greedy and the greed started at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” Rove said. “And I know this because five years ago, the administration was alerted by the regulator, James Lockhart, that there was insufficient authority and that these institutions – particularly Fannie – were out of control.”

Rove said the Bush administration’s efforts to reform Fannie and Freddie were opposed by congressional Democrats – specifically Frank and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.

“And I got to tell you, for five years, I was part of an effort at the White House to fight this and our biggest opponents on the Hill who blocked this every step of the way were people like Chris Dodd and Barney Frank. And Fannie and Freddie are the $200 billion contagion at the center of this.”

Frank has been quick to blame deregulation for some of the problems in the financial environment, as he did on Bloomberg television’s Sept. 19 “Political Capital with Al Hunt.” However, as earmark crusader Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. pointed out – it’s not deregulation, but it was the structure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that had been guarded by Frank and other members of Congress.

“Some people point at deregulation,” Flake said to the Business & Media Institute on Sept. 23. “It’s not deregulation at all. We have for far too long shielded Fannie and Freddie for example, with the implicit and now explicit guarantee. I just found it humorous.”

Flake specifically named Frank as one of the members behind letting allegations of transgressions at the two GSEs for slipping by without oversight from Congress.

“Just a few minutes ago, a reporter was asking me about this and saying, ‘Barney Frank is saying that’s just – because there were allegations,’ correct ones – ‘that Fannie and Freddie have been the playground for politicians for years and now the other side is saying Fannie and Freddie were just a small part of this and this goes far beyond.’ It does, but these same people a couple of weeks ago said, ‘You got to bail out Fannie and Freddie because they touch everything out there. They touch nearly every mortgage out there.’ And because of that explicit guarantee – that we would come and bail them out, nobody has been subject to market discipline.”

Frank claims differently, according to a letter to the editor published in the Sept. 17, 2008 Wall Street Journal. Frank noted that in 2005 he supported regulating compensation for Fannie and Freddie executives.

“In fact, my reform efforts had begun when we were still in the minority. In 2005, I joined Michael Oxley, then chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, in supporting legislation to increase the regulation of Fannie and Freddie that passed the House by a vote of 330 to 90,” Frank wrote. “When former Congressman Richard Baker proposed to examine the compensation structure of Fannie and Freddie’s top executives, and some members of Congress tried to block him, I explicitly spoke out in support of his right to do that and our right, as a Congress, to examine the GSE’s compensation practices.”

The red flags were raised long before the government bailed out the two GSEs in August 2008. The first egregious scandal involving Fannie Mae occurred in 2004. A 2004 Wall Street Journal editorial was first to point out claims in an OFHEO report that showed accounting malpractices by the GSE.
“For years, mortgage giant Fannie Mae has produced smoothly growing earnings. And for years, observers have wondered how Fannie could manage its inherently risky portfolio without a whiff of volatility, the Oct. 4, 2004, editorial, “Fannie Mae Enron?” said. “Now, thanks to Fannie’s regulator, we know the answer. The company was cooking the books. Big time.

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Scott

November 16th, 2009
11:24 am

Not even when a guest in their house? Much ado about nothing.

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George W. Bush had a plan for New Orleans after Katrina. It was called “Hope”…. yeah right. What a tool.

Barrack Obama has a plan for our current financial crisis. It is called “Despair and Socialisim”… yeah right. What a tool.

We are doomed!

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Before the economy slid, Clinton, in ‘04, in his autobiography BRAGGED that it was his adm that was responsible for the “staggering” “$800 B” in loans to unqualified buyers. He also ADMITTED in 8/08 on ABC that the Dems for years resisted efforts by the Reps to reign in Fannie & Freddie.
Also look at the senate campaign contributions Fannie Mae made during the 8 yr period before Fannie was completely taken over. Those received by Dems far out-weighed those received by Reps. Of course, Dodd was number 1. The senator who was #2 was only there for 2 of those 8 yrs before he took off on the campaign trail for president. Yes, Obama.
Just because 9/11 happened during Bush’s adm doesn’t mean he was flying the planes. Same goes for the economic crisis.

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@ TNGelding

Once again, Reagan doesn’t sign what Congress doesn’t pass. Democrats controlled the House of Representatives by WIDE margins during every year Ronnie was in office.

Bush didn’t cause GM and Chrysler to make promises they couldn’t keep.

Typical lefty spin when their MAGIC MAN turns out to be a dud.

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TN Gelding. Yes…not even when a guest in their house. The POTUS bows to nobody.

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A very smart commumnist, the one that can deal with the common sense. This goverment does what is needed to done. It is not poilitcally correct but it makes sense. Why are we in much mash today. Our leader is not able to manage. The richest, ECO run the country. their greed with bonuses imports low quality productss to make hight profits. That is our problem, not the communist China! We are the buyers, it is our responsibility to ensure good quality products for our consumers. Why blame the China. It is time to double check our system?

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Brian – I shop at WalMart every week. Most of the stuff in there comes from China. I’ve found the quality to be as good or better than American products and MUCH less expensive.

I can’t afford to pay attention so I don’t blame China for making cheap stuff we all want and need.

Blame the politicians who have allowed our dollar to sink to almost worthless status.

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Oh and another fun fact if Chinas GDP continued at its current growth rate and the US fell to zero it would take almost 20 years for them to deliver the same output as we do currently.

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“Just tax small businesses a few more percent and its no problem”.

I’ve spent 13 years reading the Internal Revenue Code and still haven’t found the section in there that applies to “small businesses”. You know that one that you – and many other GOPers always talk about how the Dems are going to raise. What Section in the Code is the tax ones that applies to small businesses that they are going to raise?

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