Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Is Fannie Mae the Democrats' Enron?

During the Enron collapse of 2002, the public and the media were persuaded that Enron was somehow a Republican scandal, based on little more than senior management's history of contributions to the Republican party. 

The ties between the Fannie Mae debacle and the Democratic party are much more intimate than that. Senior Democrats chosen for their political connections - James Johnson, Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick - took tens of millions of dollars in compensation out of the company. The ties between the Obama campaign and Fannie Mae are especially intimate: not only did Johnson head Obama's veep-vetting operation, but we learn in this Washington Post article that the campaign that Raines is advising Obama on the mortgage crisis! Well, he should know. Let's just hope the Obama operation is able to keep Raines away from the accounting side of things. Even the amazing Obama fundraising operation could not afford that!

More seriously: Here is potentially the largest financial disaster in American history. The American taxpayer stands to lose billions; Democratic insiders have extracted tens of millions. If Enron was a party scandal ... what is this? 

07/16 08:45 AM