[Rhodes22-list] Politics and Economics - Conflict of Interest

[Tootle]

Brad Haslett-2 wrote:
> 
> Anyone smell a little conflict of interest here?  Ya think if this was
> a Republican Congressman and his ex-wife the NYT's would pick-up on
> the story?  Is the story false because it's written by Fox news?  Are
> they lying about Barney being gay? Does anybody remember watching the
> video I posted last week of President Clinton saying he couldn't get
> Democrats to reign-in Fannie Mae?
> 
> Brad
> 
> -------------------------------
> 
> Friday , October 03, 2008
> By Bill Sammon
> 
> 
> 
> WASHINGTON —
> Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefitted from
> Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank's efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae
> throughout the 1990s.
> 
> So did Frank's partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the
> agency's push to relax lending restrictions.
> 
> Now that Fannie Mae is at the epicenter of a financial meltdown that
> threatens the U.S. economy, some are raising new questions about
> Frank's relationship with Herb Moses, who was Fannie's assistant
> director for product initiatives. Moses worked at the
> government-sponsored enterprise from 1991 to 1998, while Frank was on
> the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie.
> 
> Both Frank and Moses assured the Wall Street Journal in 1992 that they
> took pains to avoid any conflicts of interest. Critics, however,
> remain skeptical.
> 
> "It's absolutely a conflict," said Dan Gainor, vice president of the
> Business & Media Institute. "He was voting on Fannie Mae at a time
> when he was involved with a Fannie Mae executive. How is that not
> germane?
> 
> "If this had been his ex-wife and he was Republican, I would bet every
> penny I have - or at least what's not in the stock market - that this
> would be considered germane," added Gainor, a T. Boone Pickens Fellow.
> "But everybody wants to avoid it because he's gay. It's the
> quintessential double standard."
> 
> A top GOP House aide agreed.
> 
> "C'mon, he writes housing and banking laws and his boyfriend is a top
> exec at a firm that stands to gain from those laws?" the aide told FOX
> News. "No media ever takes note? Imagine what would happen if Frank's
> political affiliation was R instead of D? Imagine what the media would
> say if [GOP former] Chairman [Mike] Oxley's wife or [GOP presidential
> nominee John] McCain's wife was a top exec at Fannie for a decade
> while they wrote the nation's housing and banking laws."
> 
> Frank's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
> 
> Frank met Moses in 1987, the same year he became the first openly gay
> member of Congress.
> 
> "I am the only member of the congressional gay spouse caucus," Moses
> wrote in the Washington Post in 1991. "On Capitol Hill, Barney always
> introduces me as his lover."
> 
> The two lived together in a Washington home until they broke up in
> 1998, a few months after Moses ended his seven-year tenure at Fannie
> Mae, where he was the assistant director of product initiatives.
> According to National Mortgage News, Moses "helped develop many of
> Fannie Mae's affordable housing and home improvement lending
> programs."
> 
> Critics say such programs led to the mortgage meltdown that prompted
> last month's government takeover of Fannie Mae and its financial
> cousin, Freddie Mac. The giant firms are blamed for spreading bad
> mortgages throughout the private financial sector.
> 
> Although Frank now blames Republicans for the failure of Fannie and
> Freddie, he spent years blocking GOP lawmakers from imposing tougher
> regulations on the mortgage giants. In 1991, the year Moses was hired
> by Fannie, the Boston Globe reported that Frank pushed the agency to
> loosen regulations on mortgages for two- and three-family homes, even
> though they were defaulting at twice and five times the rate of single
> homes, respectively.
> 
> Three years later, President Clinton's Department of Housing and Urban
> Development tried to impose a new regulation on Fannie, but was
> thwarted by Frank. Clinton now blames such Democrats for planting the
> seeds of today's economic crisis.
> 
> "I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in
> resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I
> was president, to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie
> Mae and Freddie Mac," Clinton said recently.
> 
> Bill Sammon is FOX News' Washington Deputy Managing Editor.
> 
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