“Prosecutor, Charge Thyself,” WSJ:
Before he pursued statewide office in New York, Andrew Cuomo was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during Bill Clinton’s second term. And lest you think his tenure is forgotten, the HUD Web site has an instructive item in its Archives section.
Entitled, “Highlights of HUD Accomplishments 1997-1999,” the document chronicles the “accomplishments under the leadership of Secretary Andrew Cuomo, who took office in January 1997.”
HUD’s Web visitors learn that in 1999 “Secretary Cuomo established new Affordable Housing Goals requiring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—two government sponsored enterprises involved in housing finance—to buy $2.4 trillion in mortgages in the next 10 years. This will mean new affordable housing for about 28.1 million low- and moderate-income families. The historic action raised the required percentage of mortgage loans for low- and moderate-income families that the companies must buy from the current 42 percent of their total purchases to a new high of 50 percent—a 19 percent increase—in the year 2001.”
It’s a sign of Washington’s continuing failure to examine its own failures that HUD still views such a policy as an “accomplishment.” It’s as if the Pentagon described Pearl Harbor as a victory.We know that in the wake of Mr. Cuomo’s agitation, Fannie and Freddie’s purchases of subprime loans skyrocketed. Subprime and “liar” loans became loss leaders that eventually caused the two mortgage giants to fail—with taxpayers so far on the hook for $111 billion in losses and perhaps hundreds of billions more to come.
The problem wasn’t merely that HUD under Mr. Cuomo was raising the volume of risky loans for which taxpayers were guaranteeing. HUD was also encouraging a dangerous decline in underwriting standards at these government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). Says former Fannie Mae chief credit officer Edward Pinto, “HUD commissioned much research aimed at forcing the adoption of more flexible lending standards by the GSEs.”
In 1999, the Urban Institute published a HUD-commissioned study of Fannie and Freddie’s credit guidelines. Among its findings: “Almost all the informants said their opinion of the GSEs has changed for the better since both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made substantive alterations to their guidelines and developed new affordable loan products with more flexible underwriting guidelines.”
Keep in mind that Mr. Cuomo was doing this Fan and Fred cheerleading even as his colleagues in the Clinton Treasury were publicly raising red flags about their too-rapid expansion. Had Larry Summers, who was then Treasury Secretary, and Republican Paul Ryan, prevailed in their reform attempts, Fan and Fred wouldn’t have been able to pile up so much rotten debt and turbocharge the housing boom.
In 2008, Wayne Barrett wrote in detail in the Village Voice about the changes Mr. Cuomo also wrought at the Federal Housing Administration, encouraging bigger loans with smaller down payments.
Mr. Barrett wrote that Mr. Cuomo “made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country’s current crisis. He took actions that—in combination with many other factors—helped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the subprime markets without putting in place the means to monitor their increasingly risky investments. He turned the Federal Housing Administration mortgage program into a sweetheart lender with sky-high loan ceilings and no money down . . . .”
Mr. Barrett summed up Mr. Cuomo’s tenure in the Clinton cabinet by noting that “the country will be living with his HUD mistakes, ill- or well-intended, for a long time to come.”
Even if one believes the allegations hurled by the New York Attorney General at Bank of America—and there is much reason to doubt them—Mr. Cuomo has arguably done far more harm to taxpayers and investors than the defendants have. Before he is handed the New York governorship by Democratic and media acclamation, voters deserve a full accounting of Mr. Cuomo’s complicity in the mortgage meltdown.
[my emphasis]
Naturally, political animals like Cuomo will look for the easy target to scapegoat. The problem is when we allow them to get away with it — to, in essence, re-craft the narrative to insulate them while casting about for places to lay blame.
In a world where truth is increasingly allowed to be equated with perception (hi, Nishi!), the manufacturing of consent — of an agreed upon narrative enforced and patrolled by the group in power that society concedes to be “truthful” based on its having forged a majority consensus — is an ever-more desirous option: not only does it circumvent the need for internal logic or the objective assessment of fact in making its implied argument; but it is relatively cheap, in that it relies almost entirely on rhetoric — a commodity most easily marshaled by those in power to reinforce the status quo.
Quips Terry H (who sent along the WSJ link), “As Jeff Jarvis famously observed: anyone can print the facts, its lessons we are after.”
Indeed. Because the facts can sometimes get in the way of telling a good story — and we can’t have something like reality nudging its nose under the Utopian tent of progressivism, can we?
The scapegoats are “Wall Street Fat Cats” who securitized the leaden bad debt, like alchemists, into “credit default swaps.” This will work, because 98% of people can’t figure out what a “credit default swap” is, despite the fact that they wouldn’t be all that dangerous without all the, you know – loan defaults.
Additionally, you’ll be smeared as a racist for the umpteenth time, because you may have had an objection to lending to minorities with, eh, “non-conventional” credit histories in the first place.
Last week I saw a Leftie blog or something which stated something to the effect that it was the poor and minorities who were hardest hit by this housing debacle, presumably by “predatory lenders” relying upon government loan eligibility standards, and insofar as they lived in houses that they didn’t actually pay for.
We’re through the looking glass here, people.
The Village Voice? We live in weird times, my friend.
Ha! Tell me about it…
What’s even worse, because Federal banking regulators have surrendered their authority to New York state regulators, this incompetent charlatan Andrew Cuomo now has more power over the nation’s financial system than does Congress or the President.
wait a second. I thought girard said that people become scapegoats because they don’t take the proper rhetorical steps to ensure that they are not misunderstood. essentially that scapegoats deserve their comeuppance.
more seriously, I used to find the girardian hypothesis fascinating and interesting in a guilty — unified-french-theory-of-all-social-behaviour — pleasure sort of way. I find it much more believable these days.
Oh, speaking of being labeled “racist”, I knew I recognized that Village Voice piece: when it first appeared, I sent it to a former colleague of mine that I had regular email exchanges with, and she denounced it as “thinly disguised racism” and “blaming the poor”.
I haven’t heard from her since.
I don’t know anyone who blames the poor for the housing meltdown – you can’t really blame people for taking what is essentially free shit pushed on them by their government. Most people agree that it’s the pushers who deserve some time in the stocks . . .
she denounced it as “thinly disguised racism” and “blaming the poor.”
Those are the only two forces at work in the conservative mind, Normie. What else could she conclude?
Unfortunately, most people see the bankers as the “pushers” without seeing the gun called “ACORN” pointed at the bankers’ heads.
Seriously, after Countrywide got raped in 1996, and the Feds telling the banks that their ability to expand or that their FDIC rating is at risk if they did’t make those high-risk home loans, what choice did they have? Of course, with Fannie and Freddie promising to take all that risky paper off their hands made it a much sweeter pill to swallow.
What they didn’t expect was the gubbamint prosecutors to after them later…
*to come after them later…*
The ants found the sugar, as Ric might say. If they could admit that their experiment in social engineering caused this crisis, the world would be a better place. Unfortunately, because they cannot admit it, this kind of thing will happen again and again, and everyone involved will have stupid looks on their faces when it does.
Morons, the lot of them.
Some guy that steals 138 bucks from the Stop-N-Shop gets 5 years, while all that Mr. Cuomo has to worry about is what 3 star restaraunt to dine at tonight.
The Lesson? Rip-off America for billions, and instead of an orange jumpsuit you get a fat expense account.
Someone in the course of Taylor and Epstein’s discussion with Robinson pointed out that the Friedmans’ analysis of the Great Depression didn’t come until 30 yrs after the event.
Dis funny:
Now tell us something we DON’T know:
That’s from the Chronicle of Higher Education, no less.
h/t Jonah at The Corner
News Alert:
After being transferred by the Mutha Ambulance Service to the John Murtha Memorial Hospital via the John Murtha Parkway, John Murtha died.
Ironically, we will be buried in an unmarked grave in a potters field since he and his ilk broke the Federal Treasury.
May he be judged with the same compassion and fairness he showed the Haditha Marines.
Condolences and prayers for John Murtha’s family and friends.
Does anybody else get a Timmah Geithner vibe from Cuoumo, with a sizable dollop of political legacy cover?I seem to remember that those “in the know” in the business press touted Tim as the savant of finance. They licked hom licke a big stick of salt and rejoiced when he was selected.
It was only later that we learned of his problems in other areas, most specifically in the writing IMF monetary rules for Asian nations in the late 90’s:
Perhaps it’s just as well that the show drops with Cuomo now before he’s installed in office.
Oops!
Linky
Crap! Shoe drops. I need to stop guzzling Scotch at work.
Mr. Barrett doesn’t speak to what the Left’s reaction might have been if Mr. Bush had walked back Mr. Cuomo’s policies.
I kinda bet they would have said he was racist.
I need to get the contract to add the word “Memorial” to all the John Murtha XYZ signs in Altoona.
Um, I think the guzzling is intended to get us to the point where we don’t recognize show/shoe dropping difference BJTex, so far from stopping…….
We’ve got work to do!
Jonah follows up on the post I linked in #14: Why Liberal Arts Professors Are Liberal.
Check out this gem of moral preening:
AAAAUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHH! THE VANITY! IT BURNS US!!!
Speaking of Murtha, it looks like that’s one more chance for the GOP to smack Obama in the face.
I remember last time around they had at least me thinking Murtha was gonna lose. But he didn’t. He died in office, which is what they all dream of I think, most of them.
So does an esthete head, when cleanly pole-axed from its body.
“History has a trajectory…”
That is why
#26 ROTFL!
What’s in YOUR wallet?
Budd Dwyer died in office. He went out with a bang.
and a spatter
the American and French revolutions,
Oh, yes, the French Revolution. So like the American Revolution. I remember well when our glorious revolutionaries whacked the heads off a few tens of thousands of folks just because we didn’t happen to like them, and followed by a dozen expansionist years that involved a few paltry million deaths. And of course the banishment of our emperor.
Who the hell is this guy, and why is he still being paid to teach?
Oh. I peeked. He’s a professor of philosophy at U Denver. Wierd.
They were all equal in death, Slart. That’s the important thing.
Things are often named for the one who created them. There is for example Keynesian economics. This is an example of Marxian historical analysis. Zinn-ian too.
“Flexible”, what a wonderful word. In this case the “flexible” will be the taxpayers who will be forcibly bent over, hands grasping the ankles, once again.
Sounds rather Gastro-Bovinian to me.
I’m still trying to come up with something that people can name after me, cause of I wants a legacy. I’m thinking when someone says something particularly obtuse/convoluted, “What you just said is a complete Hadload.”
How in Sam Hill do you analyze the narratology in these stories?
I dare you. I triple-dog dare you.
This just in: In Demonsheepese, there are 42 different words for “orgy of soul-sucking horror.” To answer your questions, yes, “pre-surgical Nancy Pelosi” are 4 of them.”
VDH: Partisan finger pointer, please stand before a mirror.
A variant on Prosecutor, charge thyself.
Girard himself on the scapegoat mechanism.
(Apologies if someone already linked and I missed it.)
#35 geoffb:
The only thing “flexible” about all this is the pretzel logic of the perpetrators of it.
Actually my first link isn’t so hot. This one to the archives is better.
That was a most excellent piece of writing from VDH. Thank you, sdferr. He and Nordlinger, I really enjoy.
As VDH recommended those jerk-offs read the third book of Thucydides, I had to check which that was.
And, lookit, it’s online.
VDH always recommends Thucydides.
A very good article.
Murtha died. I did not care for his politics, but he was a Marine who served in combat. So RIP.
I am pretty sure Rendell gets to appoint his temporary replacement, but let’s hope Pennsylvania elects someone good to replace him.
Were I still at U Denver, there’d have been a fight in one of the departmental lounges.
“a fight in one of the departmental lounges”
food fight says bluto
add
/sarc off
Were I still at U Denver, there’d have been a fight in one of the departmental lounges.
With a profusion of snapped ankles, I hope. They wouldn’t know what to do next.
There you go again.
Were I still at U Denver, there’d have been a fight in one of the departmental lounges.
Over Girard, VDH, or Murtha?
[…] Jeff G. at Protein Wisdom MikeSoja – February 8, 2010 — 10:14 pm Filed in: Bureaucratic tyranny, Commies, […]
So we’re casting around looking for blame. It’s not good enough that people are visibly suffering. No, let’s apply the forensic splatter technique to determine the perp. Whoever spread the most blood, is the most complicit.
Cynn, if we can figure out who is responsible for a problem, it helps to figure out how to prevent that problem from reoccuring. This is usually seen as a good thing, even better than just noticing people are suffering and feeling bad about it.
When cynn goes to the doctor, she doesn’t care if he diagnoses a problem correctly, so long as she gets a lollipop on the way out the door.
Ladies and gentleman, I present you with my metaphor for the modern progressive.
I wondered if you’d noticed where he taught, and thrown up in your mouth just a little.
Wow, cynn really encapsulated why Leftism is Wrong there. Thanks!
That everyone feels alike, and feels approved things, is more important than solving the fucking problem.
The group with the LEAST incentive to improve the lot of the poor is the left – the poor are a “guilt-sink,” a constituency, and someone to feel superior to all rolled into one.
Got…to…remember…to breathe[gasp]!!!
Cynn’s comment perfectly encapsulates why the communists always kill millions of men, women, grandparents, children, and babies every time they get power.
When no one is culpable, all are guilty.
Comment by Jeff G. on 2/8 @ 9:44 pm #
That is one of the most efficient punches I have seen thrown in years.
As far as a scapegoat (or as Scottie Pippen once put it an “escape goat”) I do think it will be “bankers” or “Wall Street” with extra credit for working in “New York Moneymen” (Thanks Wesley!)
Seems to be a lot of that going around, sadly.
Oh that was excellent. It deserves its own bookmark for future reference.
And cynn walked right into it…
Hi, Jeff.
“Pithy”, as usual.
As I mentioned in the contention-y thread, Thucydides’ Hist. of P. War is a thing, a good thing I think. bh dropped a link to (part) of the Bk 3 VDH recommended, however, that link doesn’t have all of Bk 3 and in particular, doesn’t have the parts Mr. H is pointing at, I think.
So here’s another link to those parts (starts at p. 103 in Gutenburg) and the rest of Bk 3, beginning at Chapter 10, the hair-raising stuff (p. 109) is just a little way on into chapt. 10. Enjoy, to the extent enjoyment is possible while in the company of such a disaster as described therein.
Thanks for this, sdferr. When the text stopped I thought that was a firefox browser or extension issue on my end.
Funny thing, I went looking into an old box for a hard copy and instead came across The Twelve Caesars. It might not speak well of me (I don’t watch soap operas, I swear!), but I’ve always enjoyed it.
Thursday morning links…
Dog jigsaw puzzle for snowy days Dr. Helen: Carnival of Misandry Goofing off in college – and how colleges adjust to it (they lower their expectations) In which Krugman freaks out about the O. Yes, that was about News Flash: Obama Praises Capitali…
[…] Jeff’s got up an excellent post on Mario Cuomo’s attempt to remake himself by going after Bank of America. I’d earlier […]