Fannie Mae-No Politics (FNMA)

[Euripides90]

What's interesting is that when you get past the big numbers of TOTAL financial institution contributions to Watt's campaigns, the individual amounts are so small.

FNMA and FMCC total contributions between their pac's, employee individual contributions and former FNMA CEO's personal $1500, altogether total just over $17,000.

Misc. banks and brokerages contributed $5-10 grand each.

If this obligates Watts in any way (and it's silly to think it does on an individual institutional basis), you can buy a Congressman for a WHOLE LOT less money than many people on this board alone have lost in these stocks! Imagine what could happen if all this money were pooled...

Still as the article points out financial institutions as a GROUP have been his biggest donors, and insofar as the Freddies have supported the banks and other lending institutions, he will not toss them out willy-nilly as some irresponsible, headline-grabbing news reports suggest.

The problem in the past was that when banks gave virtually anyone a loan, they passed the buck, literally, to the Freddies and taxpayers. All they have to do to fix it, which they've been doing, is be careful who they give loans to in the first place, realizing that it's not everyone's "right" to buy a house.

In Los Angeles for example, in the latter half of previous decade, the banks were giving loans to Hispanics who signed applications without being able to read English or having a translator, so they later said when appealing for loan forgiveness. Normally the principle that "ignorance is no excuse" would apply, but sympathetic local elected officials lobbied hard for relief on the basis that they were duped by the financial institutions who knew the Freddies/taxpayers would bail them out if the borrowers defaulted. Many of these borrowers weren't even legal. Not to get into politics, but fact.

Banks in the first place pushed to give loans to minorities, blacks and Latinos, regardless of qualification. By Democrats.

Just stopping the blatant fraud all around is all it takes to reform.