aristide1 wrote:Not one mention of sending anyone to jail for this global fiasco. It's not so hot living in the United Corporations of America.
I am all for sending the corporate executives to jail who violate the law. In fact, if it were up to me, I would have sentenced Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom to death (I am serious) if it was legal to do that (no, I didn't loose a dime on WorldCom nor do I personally know anyone who did).
However, before you charge someone with a crime you need to come up with a law that has been violated (let us know, and please cite the exact portion of the US Code). As to what Bush can do, the executive branch does not send people to jail, they only file charges. It is up to the judicial system to try and sentence them. Fortunately (for me at least) people can’t be sent to jail just because you don't like them.
The current problems are the result of government involvement in the mortgage process when Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association or FNMA) was founded as a government agency in 1938 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal to provide liquidity to the mortgage market. Then in 1968 (during LBJ’s term with a Democrat controlled Congress) FNMA was converted into a private corporation to remove the activity of Fannie Mae from the annual balance sheet of the federal budget.
Fannie Mae (and Freddie Mac) buy loans made by banks and other mortgage lenders and package them into debt instruments that sell as bonds on the secondary markets. So the people at the banks who approved the loans had had no real stake in the outcome if the loans defaulted, because the loans were sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac right after they were initiated. These “New Dealâ€