Bill Clinton Steps Up, Accepts Zero Responsibility for Economic Chaos

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Not quite a finger-wagging, red-faced moment, but you can tell he'd like to burst out into rage at even being asked the question, clearly taking umbrage at the temerity to even be suggested as having the slightest role. It's not as if he had some low level, back office job. He was POTUS while much of what now haunts us came into being. He'd probably rather reminisce over Monica's taste in lip gloss than be held accountable for the current economic blowback.

Time lists him among the choices, a lineup not-so-surprisingly absent the names Barney Frank or Christopher Dodd, although Dodd's good friend Angelo Mozilo made the list. Time readers have fingered Phil Gramm as most responsible.

Go figure.

Question: If Clinton bears no responsibility, then why is his budget director and former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines so high among the choices?

Hmm, Slick?

Obama Pal Franklin Raines Buys $4.9 Million Penthouse

Barack Obama pretends to decry that CEO's of failed companies should not be getting golden parachutes. Well, his adviser Franklin Raines walked away with $90 million after running Fannie Mae into the ground.

And doesn't seem to be suffering for it.

Franklin Raines, the former top man at Fannie Mae, bought a three-bedroom, seven-bath penthouse condominium in the West End’s Ritz-Carlton Residences for $4.9 million. The condo has a rooftop terrace with a hot tub, a butler’s pantry, and three parking spaces. Raines, director of the US Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton, was CEO of Fannie Mae from 1999 to 2004.

And he didn't even need any help with the mortgage from Tony Rezko.

At the risk of being called racist, here's an ad from last month tying Obama to Raines.



More from Michelle Malkin.

'These Are Men With Sphincters of Steel'

A unique look at the financial calamity caused by the Democrats. Which basically is someone in the media is pointing out what they've done to cause it. Of course, it has to come from a neutral observer overseas since nobody is making the case here.

Needless to say, the title here is the line of the day.

Of all the characteristics of a successful politician, none is more essential than bare-faced cheek. Never has this been more evident than in the past fortnight, as senior Democrat members of the US legislature have sought to lay all the blame for the country's financial crisis on the executive arm of Government and Wall Street.

Neither of these two institutions is blameless – far from it. Yet when I see such senior Democrats as Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Christopher Dodd, Chairman of the Senate's Banking Committee, play the part of avenging angels – well, I can only stand in silent awe at the sheer tight-bottomed nerve of it. These are men with sphincters of steel.

What is the proximate cause of the collapse of confidence in the world's banks? Millions of improvident loans to American housebuyers. Which organisations were on their own responsible for guaranteeing half of this $12 trillion market? Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the so-called Government Sponsored Enterprises which last month were formally nationalised to prevent their immediate and catastrophic collapse. Now, who do you think were among the leading figures blocking all the earlier attempts by President Bush – and other Republicans – to bring these lending behemoths under greater regulatory control? Step forward, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.

In September 2003 the Bush administration launched a measure to bring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under stricter regulatory control, after a report by outside investigators established that they were not adequately hedging against risks and that Fannie Mae in particular had scandalously mis-stated its accounts. In 2006, it was revealed that Fannie Mae had overstated its earnings – to which its senior executives' bonuses were linked – by a stunning $9.3billion. Between 1998 and 2003, Fannie Mae's executive chairman, Franklin Raines, picked up over $90m in bonuses and stock options.

Yet Barney Frank and his chums blocked all Bush's attempts to put a rein on Raines. During the House Financial Services Committee hearing following Bush's initiative, Frank declared: "The more people exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness [at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae], the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially." His colleague on the committee, the California Democrat Maxine Walters [sic], said: "There were nearly a dozen hearings where we were trying to fix something that wasn't broke. Mr Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac and particularly at Fannie Mae under the outstanding leadership of Mr Franklin Raines."

Read on. There's much more.

Would have been nice if Obama's press aide Gwen Ifill brought up Franklin Raines last night, but apparently our guardians of the First Amendment won't be getting around to pointing out the facts this election cycle.

Thanks to Hot Air for the link.

Update: Un-fucking-believable.

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.

The flaming skull is out.

When Do Obama Advisers Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson Get Frogmarched?

Funny, but the media doesn't much seem interested. Have a look through recent history and ask why these criminals aren't being held accountable.

More at Hot Air.

Surprise! Look Who Franklin Raines Donated Money To

Since the disgraced Barack Obama adviser Franklin Raines is a popular topic of discussion today, I figured it's time to look at who he favored as a campaign contributor. And what do you know, the recipients of his largesse are overwhelmingly Democrats.

Shocka!

It's a regular all-star lineup of Democrat hacks, miscreants and presidential candidates.

Just need to get this out there before all of them deny ever knowing the guy.

Let's see, there's Dingy Harry Reid, Tom "Puff" Daschle, Barack "Who's Franklin Raines?" Obama, Chris "Sandwich King" Dodd, Chuckie "Cheese" Schumer, Harold Ford, Evan Bayh, Frank Lousenberg, Tim Johnson, Rahm Emanuel, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Robert "Sheets" Byrd, David Bonior, Bob "The Criminal" Torricelli, Dianne Feinstein, Paul Sarbanes, Richard Gephardt, Charles "Four Apartments" Rangel, Kent Conrad, Maxine "I Hate White People" Waters, John Lewis, William "The Refrigerator" Jefferson, Ted "The Swimmer" Kennedy, Jane Harman, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Bill Bradley and Michael Dukakis.

And those are just the names I recognize.

Oh, and he mixed in a couple of contributions to Republicans Kit Bond and J.C. Watts.

That's while he's listed as a DC resident. He also gave Walter Mondale some scratch back in the 1980s as a New York resident.

Over to you, Karen Tumulty.

Instapundit links. Thanks!

McCain Ties Obama To Fannie Mae Collapse as Obama Pretends Franklin Raines Wasn't an Adviser

Smears! Racist!

Uh, actually, the truth.

Maybe some day the media will get their heads out of their asses and dig a little further into the connection. It's not as if it's too difficult to tie Obama with Franklin Raines.

Just Google it!

Remarkably, Raines pretends to not have any connection to Obama, and the Obama people break out the tired McCain has seven houses line. Ugh.

This is another flat-out lie from a dishonorable campaign that is increasingly incapable of telling the truth. Frank Raines has never advised Senator Obama about anything -- ever. And by the way, someone whose campaign manager and top advisor worked and lobbied for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shouldn't be throwing stones from his seven glass houses.

So why did the Washington Post say he was taking Barack Obama's calls a couple months ago?

In the four years since he stepped down as Fannie Mae's chief executive under the shadow of a $6.3 billion accounting scandal, Franklin D. Raines has been quietly constructing a new life for himself. He has shaved eight points off his golf handicap, taken a corner office in Steve Case's D.C. conglomeration of finance, entertainment and health-care companies and more recently, taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters.

Ahem, here's another refresher for the Obama campaign.

In the current crisis, their biggest backers have been Democrats such as Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (Mass.). Two members of Mr. Obama's political circle, James A. Johnson and Franklin D. Raines, are former chief executives of Fannie Mae.

Is the Washington Post smearing Obama?

I wonder if those stories will magically be re-edited?

Ed Morrissey has a look at Franklin Raines and his trail of fraud. Thanks for the link!

Update: Time hack Karen Tumulty says this ad shows McCain is playing the race card, What an idiot. So McCain isn't allowed to show an ad linking Obama with another black man?

Let me stipulate: Obama's Fannie Mae connections are completely fair game. But this ad doesn't even mention a far more significant tie--that of Jim Johnson, the former Fannie Mae chairman who had to resign as head of Obama's vice presidential search team after it was revealed he got a sweetheart deal on a mortgage from Countrywide Financial. Instead, it relies on a fleeting and tenuous reference in a Washington Post Style section story to suggest that Obama's principal economic adviser is former Fannie Mae Chairman Frank Raines. Why? One reason might be that Johnson is white; Raines is black.

Not only is she's stupid, she's too lazy to even find more than one story linking the two.

But she's an, ahem, respected journalist. And a complete moron, to boot.

Maybe this respected journalist should wait for the Johnson ad.