On MSNBC, Tucker Carlson rewrote history to blame Frank for mortgage crisis
SUMMARY: Tucker Carlson claimed that the mortgage crisis "emanated from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," and asserted that one of the "reasons this crisis began ... was federal pressure to increase homeownership, and Barney Frank was in an oversight position during that process and didn't do a lot to stop it." In fact, Frank did not become chairman of the House Financial Services Committee until 2007, and it was not until Democrats gained a majority in Congress that legislation strengthening oversight of Fannie and Freddie passed.
During the March 19 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, former MSNBC host Tucker Carlson claimed that the "crisis in mortgages ... emanated from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," and then asserted: "[T]here are a lot of reasons this crisis began, but one of them was federal pressure to increase homeownership, and [Rep.] Barney Frank [D-MA] was in an oversight position during that process and didn't do a lot to stop it." In fact, Frank was not chairman of the House Financial Services Committee until 2007; prior to that, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and failed to pass oversight legislation. Indeed, it wasn't until Democrats gained a majority in Congress that legislation strengthening oversight of Fannie and Freddie passed.
As Media Matters for America has repeatedly noted, in early 2007, as the new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Frank sponsored H.R. 1427, a bill to create the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), granting that agency "general supervisory and regulatory authority over" Fannie and Freddie and directing it to reform the companies' business practices and regulate their exposure to credit and market risk. The FHFA was eventually created after Congress incorporated provisions that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said were "similar" to those of H.R. 1427 into the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, which former President Bush signed into law on July 30, 2008.
Moreover, before taking over as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Frank worked with then-committee chairman Michael Oxley (R-OH) on the Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005, which would have established the FHFA to replace the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight as overseer of the activities of Fannie and Freddie. After voting for the bill in committee, Frank voted against final passage of the bill on the House floor, stating that he was doing so because an amendment added to the bill on the House floor imposed restrictions on the kinds of nonprofit organizations that could receive funding under the bill.
Frank himself wrote in a March 18 Huffington Post article: "In recent weeks, my friends across the aisle have expended a lot of breath proclaiming that the Democrats caused the present financial crisis by failing to pass legislation to regulate financial services companies in the years 1995 through 2006. There is only small one problem with this story -- throughout this entire period the Republicans were in complete charge of the House and for the most critical years they controlled the House, the Senate, and the Presidency." Frank continued:
In the House of Representatives, the majority party has almost unlimited power over the minority party. The majority party owns the committee chairmanships; it controls what bills come to a vote; and it is under no obligation to consider the ideas of the beleaguered minority. When the Republicans were in the majority they ruled with an iron first; it is no accident that Tom DeLay was known as "The Hammer."
That is why I find it particularly flattering the Republicans now claim that in the years 1995 to 2006 I personally possessed supernatural powers which enabled me to force mighty Republican leaders to do my bidding. Choose your comic book hero -- I was all of them.
I wish I had the power to force the Republican leadership to do my bidding! If I had had that power, I would have used it to block the impeachment of Bill Clinton, to stop the war in Iraq, to prevent large tax cuts for the extremely wealthy, and to stop government intervention into the private life of Terri Schiavo. Yet that power eluded me, and I was unable to stop those things.
According to the Republicans' misty memories of the period before 2007, I allegedly singlehandedly blocked their determined efforts to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and my supposed intransigence literally caused the worldwide financial crisis.
Fortunately, we have tools to aid memory -- pencil and paper, word processing, transcripts, newspapers, and the Congressional record. And as described in the most reputable published sources, in 2005 I in fact worked together with my Republican colleague Michael Oxley, then Chairman of the Financial Services Committee, to write a bill to increase regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We passed the bill out of committee with an overwhelming majority -- every Democrat voted in favor of the legislation. However, on the House floor the Republican leadership added a poison pill amendment, which would have prevented non-profit institutions with religious affiliations from receiving funds. I voted against the legislation in protest, though I continued to work with Mr. Oxley to encourage the Senate to pass a good bill. But these efforts were defeated because President Bush blocked further consideration of the legislation. In the words of Mr. Oxley, no flaming liberal, the Bush administration gave his efforts 'the one-finger salute.'
Moreover, Carlson's claim that the crisis "emanated from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac" is contradicted by experts, including economist Dean Baker, who has stated:
Fannie and Freddie got into subprime junk and helped fuel the housing bubble, but they were trailing the irrational exuberance of the private sector. They lost market share in the years 2002-2007, as the volume of private issue mortgage backed securities exploded. In short, while Fannie and Freddie were completely irresponsible in their lending practices, the claim that they were responsible for the financial disaster is absurd on its face -- kind of like the claim that the earth is flat.
From the March 19 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe:
CARLSON: This all began, or partly began, with the crisis in mortgages. And that emanated from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, right here in what -- right near where I'm sitting right now. And those were overseen by the federal government. I mean, there are a lot of reasons this crisis began, but one of them was federal pressure to increase homeownership, and Barney Frank was in an oversight position during that process and didn't do a lot to stop it -- lending to --
JOE SCARBOROUGH (co-host): Well, and --
CARLSON: -- people --
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.
CARLSON: -- who couldn't pay it back.
SCARBOROUGH: Let's play --
BRZEZINSKI: Play --
SCARBOROUGH: -- a couple --
BRZEZINSKI: Absolutely. Let's show it.
SCARBOROUGH: Let's show a couple of clips.
It's the stated falsehood that's at issue. No one in this business is completely impartial.
Of course it is a falsehood and it is advanced by people like Carlson and BO.
It doesn't matter who it is advanced by though. It's the message, not the messenger, that's the problem.
Well, given the facts, he'd kinda have to.
Yeah, what Victor said.
Anyone can push conservative misinformation.
Why do you seem to have this undeniable need to go after the messenger instead of the message? This isn't the first time I have seen you do this.
Why do you seem to have this undeniable need to go after the messenger instead of the message?
Not sure what you mean? Carlson is a partisan just like BO , they are the messengers.
It doesn't matter if someone is partisan. It's perfectly okay to be partisan.
Attacking someone because they are partison makes no sense. It doesn't matter. It's the message that matters, not the messenger. Attacking MSNBC in general makes no sense. Attacking Tucker Carlson makes no sense. Attack what he says.
Why do you have this undeniable need to go after the messenger instead of the message?
Those in the news media are supposed to be neutral or at least prent a neutral image when they are reporting the news. Comentators or talking heads can spew all the slant they want with no problem.
Look, Tucker is a source of disinformation. (look up how the Soviets used Disinformazion to control their conquests)
If Tucker wants to write fiction, he should take up novels, or at minimum, put "this is my fantasy" over his lower third screen, preferably blinking in red and yellow.
If Tucker wants to be taken as a journalist, and there's no question he doesn't know that that means, he needs to set a higher standard of commitment to facts and truth. Tucker isn't just fooling himself, but he's trying to fool us, too.
What is your point here?
Attack what someone says, not who they are. The poster I was addressing goes after MSNBC in general instead of the bad things their reporters occasionally do.
ya know, when he was at cpac and called out the neo cons about lying and the need to have a counter to the ny times and then got booed......i thought he had finally turned the corner........so much for that
Look up irrelevant in the dictionary and you will find a picture of Tucker Carlson. Why this guy is still invited on any show is a mystery to me. Does Carlson have a radio show? What does this guy do for a living?
They would absolutely LOVE IT if Frank was completely responsible for this mess, because then they would have their gay boogeyman.
I love it how these guys say something along the lines of, "Well, in 2003, Frank opposed more regulation of Fannie and Freddie..." of course, ignoring the fact that the republicans held good sized majorities in the House AND Senate at that time, and that if they had wanted to get more regulation passed (they didn't), they could have. Easily, even against the objections of Mr. Frank, oh, and the House doesn't have a filibuster rule, and I doubt that it would have a hard time making it out of committee, because once again, if the republicans really had wanted it, back in 2003, they could have had it. Easily.
The media knows what works best for the GOP, Mag. Make a big sprawling issue like our current economic situation into a simple, little-picture issue. Point to one guy, or one agency, and say "he did it!". They know what their audience wants-- permission to stop thinking, and an enabler that will distract them from what's really going on in the world.
Then they can just sit around listening to Rush do Barney Fwank impressions
I completely agree of course. They, most anyway, tend to be the bumper sticker crowd. I have a friend of mine from high school who is a rabid, and I mean RABID republican crazed right winger. We were arguing back and forth over the stimulus plan, and the budget that just passed as well, and of course, he sounded like a Rush robot. He hit all of the high points that he thought were "bad" spending items, like pig manure odor and waste storage. He thought this was the funniest thing, even though it is a serious issue. And he brought up volcano monitoring, and so on and so forth.
And then, I have found recently this is a card they like to play, he claims that all liberals LOVE to play the victim, which didn't even make sense in the context of the debate we were having. He's been reading too much Ann Coulter methinks, and he actually suggested that I read her books, because, you know, she just "tells it like it is", if he means of course, lying about everything she writes.
I had to give up on him because he would only regurgitate talking points, and no thought as to what he was saying, and whether or not it made sense. He did love a bumper sticker phrase though. He even whipped out the old "Obama uses a teleprompter, LOL" line. Which, again, doesn't make any sense either.
Hilarious, isn't it? During the same period of time where republicans claim Barney had all this power to "stop" them from enacting regulation (Oops! sorry, I laughed so hard at the idea of republicans enacting regulation that milk came out of my nose!) that same group of republicans were able to try to impeach clinton, meddle in the personal life of terry schaivo, give tax cuts to the extremely wealthy and start two wars. I wish my senator was as powerful and successful as Barney!
Carlson is spoiling for a fight to get himself back into the limelight again. I am sooo worried by this bufoon.
He has even been attacking John Stewarrt, and while I'd love to see Stewart destroy him "Crossfire" style. I'd rather watch Tucker slip into the dust bin of television blathers.
Tucker is having someone (probably a lot of them) whisper in his ear, boosting his ego, that he can turn the GOP's fortunes around.
Recall Tucker's recent line that "I am the least partisan person I know." On it's face it's absurd, but this indicates Tucker hangs out with a lot of partisans.
Where are all those Republican knobs with their UTube propaganda video that places the blame on Frank? I have yet to see one conjob poster here provide one reform the Republicans were proposing that would have stopped FM and FM buying all those bad loans from the Wall St thugs.
No, they want to claim that a handful of liberals working to make it easier for the working poor and minorities to secure a safe loan are the ones to blame.
"Oh, look, Tucker. Mommie saved all your pocket protectors and other stuff in this big cardboard box! All your Nixon buttons and those old video tapes of the Ronald Reagan movies. Aren't you happy I did that, Dear? And don't forget to thank uncle M. for getting you that job on the television. Frankly, your dad and I were getting a little tired of you just hanging around the house and embarrassing us when people came over. Don't forget all your clip-on bow-ties. There are all in the plastic bag over there. I know, I KNOW, Dear. You say you will never ware a bow-tie again, but you never can tell."
Hilarious!
Tucker Carlson is the messenger, but he rewrote the message with GOP talking points, aka, BS. To say he can't be attacked for that is a joke.
No one is saying he can't be attacked for what he said. Poor reading comprehension strikes again.
I was saying that you can't make generalized attacks on a person or an entity like MSNBC because of a specific incident.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/23617.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/business/new-agency-proposed-to-oversee-freddie-mac-and-fannie-mae.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
Please explain what is rellevant about these posts. Can you name any other legislation between 2000-2006 that Bush really wanted that the Democrats blocked. No you can't because it did not happen. Any thing Bush wanted he passed. Iraq War, No Child Left Behind, Stimulus packages, Bail out & Tax Cuts. If the republicans wanted any thing over the last 8 years they got it. I find it funny that the dems were soo powerful on the one issue that really mattered. You would have a point if the bill was passed and blocked by a Frank led fillibuster.
What is relavant is the constant denial of Frank and the other dems about any culpability in this financial mess. The facts say otherwise, not to mention the visual proof, the Times article, the admission by Bill Clinton about the resistance of the dems to reform, there are mountains of proof. And for the record, all of the things uyou point to were passed with democratic support, Bush and the reps were never in a position to pass anything themselves. There was no democratic support for mortgage reform. And to further clarify the record, most of the deregulation that is blamed on Bush took place in the Clinton administration.
They deny stuff when they are falsely accused. Are you saying that they need to accept and welcome false accusations against them? What relevant and accurate accusations have they denied?
Name one.
You are blind and deaf apparently. Ignorance is bliss.
FL - I suggest you read Paul Muolo's fine book "Chain of Blame: How Wall Street Caused the Mortgage and Credit Crisis". Note how at the time of the proposal,9/11/2003, the lenders were just firing up their new marketing plans.
Also, re-read the title of the book. I'm reminded of dialogue in the 1933 "King Kong" movie,
Police Lieutenant: Well, Denham, the airplanes got him.
Carl Denham: Oh no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast.
It was greed on Wall Street that steamrollered everything. that's why $50 TRILLION in credit default swaps were traded.
I should clarify the lenders were recruiting freelance mortgage brokers, instead of just their own staff, and paying huge bonuses for bringing in mortgages.
At no time did I ever give Wall St a pass on this issue, they were as much to blame as anyone and the credit default swaps were invented in the late 90's to keep the gravy train rolling, no doubt about it. But the subject of this thread is Frank and the dems resistance to Fannie reform, they resisted it for years, even Bill Clinton acknowledges it. But Frank and Dodd and Waters and Schummer don't have the honesty to admit they blew it. The dems were unanimous in their opposition to reform and they supported deregulation during the Clinton years. Pelosi tries to pin the blame on Bush now but she suported the Commodity Futures Modernization Act passed in 2000, this bill is the single most important piece of deregulation that contributed to this mess. The bill was sponsored by reps, co-sponsored by dems and passed with virtually no dem opposition, more reps opposed it than dems.
Frank didn't have resistance to the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reform. The Bush Administration did, and so when they added a poison pill amendment to the bill in a direct attempt to make it impossible for Frank to support it, he didn't support the newly revised bill. He was always for reform, and that's why when the Dems regained control of Congress, that's one of the first things he did push for!
Reality has a liberal bias.
You get asked to name one accurate and factual accusation that Democrats have denied, and you can't even do that, and you want to call ME the deaf and blind one?
I suggest you read Paul Muolo's book. The sources you link are the equivalent of quoting comic books, graffiti and bathroom walls in brothels.