What did Barack Obama do? He wrote a letter.

I wish Sen. McCain would have the nerve to say something like “What did Sen. Obama do? He mailed it in!”

Hot Air’s had this up for a while. I just saw it. He only figuratively voted “present.” What he did was refuse to cast a vote to stop debate, so that a vote on the merits of the reform bill……

Goodeye_Closed on October 15, 2008 at 12:29 PM

Hmmm…
You quoted the Biblical passage “and a little child shall lead them”…
You had been referring to Obama…
Obama is male…
A male “little child” is a boy…
RACIST!

Obama voted “present” on Fannie/Freddie reform
Barack Obama has claimed that he foresaw the subprime mortgage collapse
and took steps to warn the Treasury — by writing a letter. That claim
has come in two presidential debates. Peter….

Has anyone actually seen this alleged letter? Maybe the sheer awesomeness of its prose makes it too dangerous for a mere mortal to look at directly.

Chuck Schick on October 15, 2008 at 12:31 PM

FWIW, I posted it on p. 1 of the comments…

Q: What else did Barry do vis a vis “warnings” about Fannie Mae?

A: Absolutely Nothing

Obama, Durbin propose federal mortgage reforms
Wednesday, February 15, 2006

CHICAGO TRIBUNE
By David Jackson

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) proposed a sweeping set of federal reforms Tuesday to combat mortgage fraud, ratcheting up enforcement and creating a national database of brokers who have been disciplined…

Oh-so predictably, the finale brings us right back to more money for Acorn:

Obama’s proposed bill, written in consultation with the Treasury Department, Madigan and Chicago police, would authorize increased federal funding for mortgage counseling. It also would grant funding to the state agencies that license and monitor appraisers and other real estate professionals.

A: The COMMUNIty ReinveSTment ACT.

Just wondering…are you guys seeing any ads about this stuff in your area (527’s, RNC or otherwise?) I’m not seeing much here in Michigan…but maybe it’s because I tivo everything and am fast forwarding through them all.

dmarie on October 15, 2008 at 9:40 AM

I haven’t seen this ad aired yet & I get channels in all three viewing areas (NY/NJ/PA) but I saw Frank Luntz (the guy with the focus group and the live reaction graph) this morning on Fox with this new ad. He called this the “MOST FAVORABLE NEGATIVE AD“

And so they come…by the millions…buying into Dr. Barack’s promises. By the time they figure out they’ve been taken it’s too late. Dr. Barack’s on the noon train to Washington.

See link: http://www.nysun.com/business/ex-sec-official-blames-agency-for-blow-up/86130 to the New York Sun article. An execerpt follows:

“The Securities and Exchange Commission can blame itself for the current crisis. That is the allegation being made by a former SEC official, Lee Pickard, who says a rule change in 2004 led to the failure of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch.

The SEC allowed five firms — the three that have collapsed plus Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — to more than double the leverage they were allowed to keep on their balance sheets and remove discounts that had been applied to the assets they had been required to keep to protect them from defaults.

Making matters worse, according to Mr. Pickard, who helped write the original rule in 1975 as director of the SEC’s trading and markets division, is a move by the SEC this month to further erode the restraints on surviving broker-dealers by withdrawing requirements that they maintain a certain level of rating from the ratings agencies.”

……
The so-called net capital rule was created in 1975 to allow the SEC to oversee broker-dealers, or companies that trade securities for customers as well as their own accounts. It requires that firms value all of their tradable assets at market prices, and then it applies a haircut, or a discount, to account for the assets’ market risk. So equities, for example, have a haircut of 15%, while a 30-year Treasury bill, because it is less risky, has a 6% haircut.

The net capital rule also requires that broker dealers limit their debt-to-net capital ratio to 12-to-1, although they must issue an early warning if they begin approaching this limit, and are forced to stop trading if they exceed it, so broker dealers often keep their debt-to-net capital ratios much lower.

In 2004, the European Union passed a rule allowing the SEC’s European counterpart to manage the risk both of broker dealers and their investment banking holding companies. In response, the SEC instituted a similar, voluntary program for broker dealers with capital of at least $5 billion, enabling the agency to oversee both the broker dealers and the holding companies.

This alternative approach, which all five broker-dealers that qualified — Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley — voluntarily joined, altered the way the SEC measured their capital. Using computerized models, the SEC, under its new Consolidated Supervised Entities program, allowed the broker dealers to increase their debt-to-net-capital ratios, sometimes, as in the case of Merrill Lynch, to as high as 40-to-1. It also removed the method for applying haircuts, relying instead on another math-based model for calculating risk that led to a much smaller discount.

The SEC justified the less stringent capital requirements by arguing it was now able to manage the consolidated entity of the broker dealer and the holding company, which would ensure it could better manage the risk……”

Silly, when Obama is POTUS we won’t have to worry about being attacked. Everyone will love us.

Isaiah 11:6
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

Maybe I have the wrong idea about what a debate is supposed to be. To me, they rarely respond directly to what the other side says which leads me to believe politicians debating is a pointless activity. I don’t know. I’m just frustrated I guess.