Sunday, October 12, 2008

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

EMAIL SENT TO ME THAT TELLS THE GENESIS OF THE COLLAPSE OF AMERICA'S FINANCIAL SYSTEM and these are the people Obama trusts to correct the problem.

Subject: FW: An Inconvenient Truth

Here is a quick look into 3 former Fannie Mae executives who have brought down Wall Street.

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 c 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 g 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.

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 late 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.



FRANKLIN RAINES? Raines works for the Obama Campaign as Chief Economic Adviser

TIM HOWARD? Howard is also a Chief Economic Adviser to Obama

JIM JOHNSON? Johnson hired as a Senior Obama Finance Adviser and was selected to run Obama's Vice Presidential Search Committee

IF OBAMA PLANS ON CLEANING UP THE MESS - HIS ADVISERS HAVE THE EXPERTISE - THEY MADE THE MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE. Would you trust the men who tore Wall Street down to build the New Wall Street ?

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

The non-partisan Snopes.com concluded that no Fannie Mae executive has (or ever had) an ongoing role with the campaign as an economic adviser: http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/fanniemae.asp

* Not an adviser: Frank Raines
Barack estimates that he and Raines have talked for "maybe five minutes" in their lives, and Franklin Raines himself even released a statement saying that he is "not an advisor to Barack Obama, nor have I provided his campaign with advice on housing or economic matters."
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/24/fact-check-obama-has-advisers-from-fannie-mae/

* Not an adviser: Tim Howard
This supposed connection appears to have been made up completely out of thin air. Snopes.com writes, "We haven't yet found any tangible connection between Tim Howard and the Obama campaign, however, much less any information supporting the claim that Howard is a 'chief economic adviser' to Obama."
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/fanniemae.asp

* Not an adviser: Jim Johnson
Jim Johnson has never held a paid position with Obama for America. He volunteered to help Barack select a vice presidential nominee but stepped down months ago after just one week. http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/06/jim_johnson_out_as_chief_vette.php

* Barack Obama and Joe Biden will prevent predatory lending by cracking down on mortgage fraud. They will make sure homebuyers have honest and complete information about their mortgage options, mandate accurate loan disclosure, and give a tax credit to all middle-class homeowners. Read more about the Obama-Biden plan to solve our mortgage crisis: http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/#home-ownership

* Barack Obama introduced legislation in 2006 to combat mortage fraud and in 2007 sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and FEC Chairmen Ben Bernanke urging them to take action on the looming subprime mortgage crisis.

- K.E.

Anonymous said...

NG -

For all of your criticism of the media and how bad journalism has got I'm a little disappointed that you accept e-mail forwards as fact.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/fanniemae.asp

Lonely

Anonymous said...

Obama will distance himself from all the negatives. Heck by the end of the week he will be saying e never heard of ACORN and everyone will believe him.
tos

NewsGnome said...

I have read the Snopes so-called denial of Obama's connections to Raines, Johnson and Howard and it are parsed in ways that an Obama supporter undoubtedly wrote it. There are so many ifs, ands and buts, it is obvious to me that Obama indeed has connections, paid or not, to these people. He trained ACORN people in Chicago and was part of the vote against the regulations McCain to stop the subprime loan debacle. He pushed in the senate and also advised ACORN in getting subprime loans. I realize you are unable to succeed one your own without government help, but if Obama is elected, good by to the most successful economic system the world has ever known.

NewsGnome said...

TOS, I've never seen a group of people deny truth as those supporting Obama. They seem so interested in electing a person with no judgement just because he is half black, that they are willing to swallow lies ad infinitum. NG

Anonymous said...

The point also is that they are a radical group who pressured banks and protested outside bank owners homes calling them racist for not giving loans to unqualified buyers and Obama was directly related to this group by 1-Being their attorney 2-Donating 800,000 to them to "get out the vote" for him of course and 3-Teaching people as a ACORN member to get things they wanted from politicians.
I guess none of the counts because his name isn't McCain
tos

NewsGnome said...

The Raines, Howard, Johnson debacle is worse by a more than a trillion dollars than the Enron collapse...and we have to pay for it...and it is the the Obama Robin Hood policies that have done it.

Anonymous said...

Welcome to the "New Deal"
tos

NewsGnome said...

TOS, let me slightly re-phrase that in terms of Obama..."Welcome to the RAW deal."

NG

Anonymous said...

hahaha!
tos

Anonymous said...

... I simply bring the allusion to your attention. Catch me if you can. A great movie showing exactly what happens to a theif.

There is nobody better at doing what they do than themselves. As long as they are monitored, and there are some double checks for the numbers installed... Let them clean up their own litter box.