Think Twice Finance

Freddie and Fannie Offed? Dare to Dream.

A reader asked me the other day when Freddie and Fanny were created. I knew the answer was that rarest of events, something that happened before my time. God created the earthquake, so I thought it might have been on the third day of all time or something. So I Googled it. Turns out FDR created the F—-ies when he was creating every other agency I know and love. But I forgive him. He, after all, left their debt on the Treasury’s balance sheet. Our government got down and dirty with Freddie and Fannie when Congress and the President took the F—-ies off the balance sheet in 1968, thereby magically reducing the government debt while continuing to borrow their collective asses off behind the backs of happy idiots among the citizenry. (A happy idiot is somebody who doesn’t understand that the definition of a lying politician is “a politician whose mouth is moving.”)

I am so bored with the current offerings of the public airways that I tuned in to the Congressional testimony of Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke and Chris Cox to the Senate Banking Committee. Good move. I got the chance to watch a group of jackasses (the senators) tell a group of men (Paulson, et. al.) they were jackasses. Better, I got to hear the group of men agree that a jackass has two legs and an opposing thumb, while men bray and have hooves. It was reality TV taken to the ultimate.

The Chairman of the herd of senators, Jackass Dodd, kept reminding Secretary Paulson that he would soon be gone and Dodd would be left in his chair to deal with the consequences of Paulson’s “idea” to bail out the agencies. (Hint to the happy idiots. You can vote against Dodd next time he’s up. Make some somebody happy.)  True, Paulson will soon be gone – but the emphasis is wrong. The problem is that Dodd and his ilk were in their chairs, pumping up the debt of the F—-ies long before Paulson was caught holding the bag.

Poor Secretary Paulson thought he was being hired to clean up Congress’ mess. This week he had to hire another Goldman executive to whom that job will be delegated. He is charged with the duty of getting a bill through Congress that simultaneously gives the F—-ies the authority to borrow a whole lot more money and backs the whole thing with an unlimited line of credit from the taxpayer. This is being done because Paulson wants to ensure that he never needs to use this authority. And I am the Queen of England.

What is it with Goldman Executives? I think of them as smart guys. Maybe there is a hidden room in the offices of Goldman where executives are brainwashed and become The Manchurian Candidate.