Freddie, Fannie & Mary Kate

Freddie & Fannie Again- Today we learn that chief executive Richard Syron of Freddie Mac was ignoring warnings from his internal risk management officer of the pending mortgage crisis. Syron was warned as far back as 2004 to start cutting risk and ignored these pleas. On top of this he was compensated with $38 million over the past 5 years. His peer at Fannie Mae, Daniel Mudd who shockingly is a Ph.D. wielding economist claims that they are victims of circumstance. Meanwhile, Mudd collected $42 million in pay. Additionally, these two quasi public organizations are so damaged that it’s impossible to find candidates interested in replacing these two knuckleheads. So they will continue to be well compensated, with I assume taxpayer monies, for their ignorance in driving Freddie & Fannie to the verge of collapse. If this doesn't cause people to take to the streets, I really don't know what would. I suppose since 80% of the people should not have qualified to own homes and benefited under this scam, that there is little reason for these people to protest.

GOP Redeployment- Voter registration rolls in 26 States so far this year show an increase in Democratic registrations by a net total of nearly 215,000 and a decline in Republican registrants to the tune of 1,400,000. Wow, this is only half the States and the Dems have a 1.2 net advantage. Increasing registrations to Independent have made this basically a third party in many states with each splitting the registrants 1/3, 1/3, 1/3. I can only hope that some of these gains go to the Green Party.

More EcObama- I wanted to add to yesterday’s post that conservation and efficiency alone could help this country toward energy independence. Both these tools we already have available to us, and applied with any cohesion would provide enormous savings. Check out Bob Herbert’s NYT column today.


What’s with this Mary-Kate Olsen refusing to speak to federal investigators and demanding immunity before she does? Seems to me if one of my “good friends” died of some kind of overdose with some of the drugs being prescribed illegally that I would cooperate with zero conditions. This definitely makes one further wonder of what Olsen’s afraid of in sitting with investigators. Doesn’t seem like natural behavior to me.