Dr. Charles W. Calomiris, the Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business stated during a recent speech he made at New York's Harvard Club that actions by the CEO's at Fannie and Freddie had a major role in the devastating financial spiral we find ourselves in.
"During the economic expansion of 2003 to 2007, lenders accumulated a large portfolio of risky investments." "One particularly large category of these investments were the $3 TRILLION worth of risky mortgage loans given to U.S. borrowers with poor history and little or no down payments." That is right the number is 3 TRILLION!
Question: who forced these banks to make these loans? Can you say Congress led by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd?
Dr. Calomiris went on to say that "despite strongly voiced opposition from risk managers to Fannie and Freddie, the CEOs pushed ahead, largely because of their desire to please CONGRESS". This statement was made based on his review of internal e-mails between Freddie's and Fannie's risk managers and their CEOs during the time period in question.
We know it is a fact, having watched the Congressional testimony linked in earlier Blog Entries that Barney and Chris along with some other Democrats did everything in their power to block any increased regulatory scrutiny of Fannie and Freddie and in fact made statements to the effect that nothing was wrong at either financial institution when in fact the House of Cards was beginning to collapse.
Now Barney is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. You can't make this stuff up! What is wrong with this picture when the people who are directly responsible for helping to create the mess are the ones in charge of fixing it!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I am going to guess that your opinion is not from Nobel Laureates Krugman or Stiglitz?
This professor is not a Conservative. He has written many articles that would definitley be viewed as being non-Conservative. But I ask you did Krugman or Stiglitz review the internal voice mails at Fannie and Freddie? We are again talking about credibility here and unless your guys have performed the due diligence than they cannot be viewed as credible. but instead just two liberal economists presenting their views.
Did he win a Nobel Prize?
Post a Comment