Fannie and Freddie Bonus Bonanza!

Well, well, well, it looks like the winners at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are due $210 million in bonuses. Do you hear the hue and cry from the likes of Barney "I had a sexual relationship with a senior Fannie Mae executive Herb Moses" Frank (D-MA), or Rahm "I was a Freddie Mac Director during the scandal" Emmanuel? I didn't think so.

Despite the utterly stupid comment of Chuck Grassley (R-IA), that AIG bonus takers should commit suicide, at least he is consistent in that he considers these bonuses "an insult." Protect your Medical Identity with TrustedID. $1,000,000 Warranty & Great Customer Service

As I have written previously in my post titled "Bonus Indignation," the chorus line of crooks, Barney Frank and Chris "Sweetheart Mortgage" Dodd (D-CT) were aghast at the $156 million in bonuses to the folks at AIG. How about now? Not a peep.

You may or may not know that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been havens for the cronies of the political left since the time of Bill Clinton. Here are two names: Franklin "$50 million" Raines, and Jamie "$26 million" Gorelick. Of course, Barney Frank was on the committee that was supposed to overseeing the actions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

While you may have enjoyed this trip down memory lane, the point of this post is to point out the utter hypocrisy that Barney Frank is trying to set the pay of all employees of companies the federal government has bailed out, under the guise of a bill titled "The Pay for Performance Act of 2009" yet he finds no problem with Fannie and Freddie folks getting bonuses. Will ACORN show up with a bus load of people at the Fannie and Freddie houses and hassle them? Don't hold you breath. A good credit score can save money! See your CREDIT SCORE in Seconds - $0

The veneer of concern for taxpayers money is so thin, it is ridiculous. Instead of focusing on bonus, why doesn't Congress quit spending money America doesn't have? Oh, because tax and spend was the hope and change Americans voted for.

American citizen, Mickey Mouse and dead Chicago gold fish, you, yes you, voted for President Teleprompter and the inmates running the asylum formerly known as the US Congress. When mid-term elections come up, consider voting in some responsible adults, and voting out crooks like Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and Nancy Pelosi. Then maybe, maybe, some fiscal sanity can be restored to this country, financial system, and regulatory environment.

For reference, read Congress Declares Contracts Null and Void, and The Unconstitutional Congress.

A Moral Hazard

CNBC's Rick Santelli got it right about this "Mortgage Relief" being pushed by President Obama. While I generally stay out of particular political issues in this blog, the video clip really hits the nail on the head.

For reference, Wikipedia has a good definition of moral hazard:

Moral hazard is the prospect that a party insulated from risk may behave differently from the way it would behave if it were fully exposed to the risk. Moral hazard arises because an individual or institution does not bear the full consequences of its actions, and therefore has a tendency to act less carefully than it otherwise would, leaving another party to bear some responsibility for the consequences of those actions.

So, some homeowners got themselves into mortgages which they probably knew they wouldn't be able to make. Now that they are sinking, in rides the US taxpayer to bail them out. As somebody who pays their mortgage on time, I resent having to bail somebody out of their uninformed mortgage mistake. You can read a great primer about the financial crisis here and here.

While I have sympathy for those who don't fully understand mortgages and mortgage documents, I don't have sympathy for mortgage brokers and those who just got big eyes for big houses. I also have only a modicum of sympathy for banks who were bullied into making bad loans by the US Justice Department via the 1977 and 1999 Community Reinvestment Act.

Although I could get on my soap box about thrift, savings, mortgages, living within your means, I won't. Rather, I wish that US citizens will seriously consider both the economic stimulus signed into law and these mortgage and mortgage relief provisions that President Obama wants passed. Finally, I tip my hat to Rick Santelli for telling it like it is.