Rove Blames the Economy Melting Down on Fannie and Freddie
First question, why is this man on my television screen instead of sitting in a jail cell somewhere? Karl Rove first claims that the stimulus package didn't work even though as Pat Garofalo over at the Think Progress' The Wonk Room noted:
...the Congressional Budget Office found that it has created or saved 600,000 to 1.6 million jobs, with plenty of punch still to come.
Rove is then asked by Greta Van Susteren if the Bush administration is responsible at all for the shape the economy is in. Rove tries to blame the economy melting down on Fannie and Freddie and on Chris Dodd and Barney Frank--it's all their fault! This is the same crap Rove was peddling in his Wall Street Journal column back in January. Barry Ritholtz does a nice job of debunking Rove's nonsense here--Karl Rove’s Factually Challenged Housing Revisionism.
VAN SUSTEREN: Here's the problem with what you suggest. I mean, that may be the suggestion for the economy, and I don't mean to suggest that decisions are made on politics. But to be sort of practical and realistic, the fact that there will be an election next November, if they cut the corporate tax, as you say, for big corporations, accelerate depreciation for small businesses, the first thing I would do as an opponent is saying, Well, he finally came around to the Republican thinking. And it took him a year or so or a year behind the ball on this in terms of the role of the recession. Plus, we've spent all this money in the stimulus package and we've got ourselves now in a huge spending situation. So you know, that solution may help the economy, but doesn't that make him more vulnerable politically?
ROVE: Well, it does say that he changes course. But I mean, look, it's not working. We were told that if we did nothing, unemployment would go to 8 percent. We did exactly what the president wanted, his $787 billion stimulus bill, and unemployment has gone to 10 percent. We've gone from a situation -- when he came into office, there were 142.1 million Americans working. Today there are 138.5 million Americans working. We did what he said and it has not gotten appreciably better.
And at some -- look, this -- and this may be beyond his control. There's an interesting article today in The Wall Street Journal about the Federal Reserve Board chairman -- excuse me -- president in St. Louis who suggested that we may have a new paradigm, that we had a jobless recovery in the '90s, a jobless recovery following 2001, and we may now be in our third jobless recovery, this one the most jobless of all. But we may -- we may be in a new paradigm of how the economy reacts to circumstances like we find ourselves in.
VAN SUSTEREN: And I suppose there's also sort of the added promise that so many companies have cut jobs and they have found out that they can sort of push their workers a little bit harder and be a little more efficient, so they don't necessarily have to expand, and with sort of all the uncertainty in terms of the tax code or in terms of the economy, that they don't want to take any big steps in terms of their businesses. So it really -- I mean, the fact of a jobless recovery is -- I mean, that's where we are. And it seems that it's going to be hard to get out of that.
ROVE: Well, and look, we -- the government's borrowing a lot more money, and as a result, the private sector is making fewer loans to businesses. We've had private lending from banks go down like this, while government borrowing from -- in essence, by issuing debt and getting people to buy it, has been going up like this. We're seeing a process of crowding out. And we know that we need to have investment if we're going to make the economy more efficient, more productive and grow.
VAN SUSTEREN: Karl, in light of the fact that the economy does move rather slowly, shouldn't the Bush 43 administration have seen all of this sort of unfolding? Obviously, they couldn't see the stimulus bill and what impact that had. But was the Bush administration slow to react so that, in some ways, you got to take responsibility?
ROVE: Well, look, in early 2008, there was a bipartisan stimulus bill passed. What happened, though, was the -- the minor -- you know, the downturn in the economy was made much, much worse, significantly worse by the implosion of Fannie and Freddie in the summer of 2008. This was something that the -- the Bush administration started working on in February of 2001, got a bill through the Senate Finance Committee after four years of very hard work, only to have it filibustered by Senator Chris Dodd, who incidentally, had as one of his fellow filibusterers the newly elected senator from the state of Illinois, Barack Obama. Barack Obama and Chris Dodd ultimately, and Barney Frank, the other villain in this drama, ultimately all voted for that reform bill that Bush had been pushing since 2001, but in September of 2008, after Fannie and Freddie had gone belly up.
So look, there was going to be -- there was a minor downturn. There was a downturn of some nature in 2008. Congress saw it coming. The administration saw it coming. And they passed a stimulus bill. But what Democrats blocked us from coming and -- and dealing with and which a lot of people didn't understand the magnitude of the problem was the collapse of Fannie and Freddie.
You know, they were leveraged at the end between 60-to-1 to 78-to-1, which means that a decline in value of the underlying mortgages that they held, $5.4 trillion worth of mortgages -- a decline of 1.3 percent would bankrupt the companies, and that's exactly what happened.
VAN SUSTEREN: Karl, thank you, as always.
ROVE: You bet. Thanks, Greta.
Transcript via Nexis Lexis.
I'm sure that every time Rove is on TV aspirin and Pepto Bismol sales spike. How can anybody not get a headache and feel like throwing up when they are forced to listen to this fat pastey lying bag of shit? He's hard on the eyes and he a makes no sense. Why doesn't he just go hang out with his manwhore Jeff Gannon and call it a day.
loses his wings.
turdblossom buffalo fries them.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
number of people who go to ER's with irritable bowel syndrome. KKKarl causes it.
Ya, really - he can get by now without this constant trash talk. Maybe he is just a creep. Or maybe he does it for the same reason he felt it necessary to destroy the country, and nobody could convince him otherwise.
Either way it looks like he's getting himself into quite a tizzy about his conspiracies to defraud the federal government. That's serious stuff and i'd be surprised frankly if he wasn't squealing like a rat right now, as is 'the way' of stupid criminals and Republicans alike. He probably feels safe in the POX Theatre studio.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
ROVE: "Well, look, in early 2008, there was a bipartisan stimulus bill passed."
Bipartisan? Is that why Governor Sarah Palin and Governor Mark Sanford refused much of it? That money kept a lot of teachers in place for one thing. And Fannie and Freddie's troubles didn't start in January '09 either, pal.
I know what'll fix the economy! Tax cuts for the Rich! It's brilliant. There will be massive piddle on, er... I mean trickle down to the middle class. Yeah, that's the ticket.
The both parties suck, I saw this coming years ago and these idiots did not see it. The stimulus was a joke it only benefited the banks and you can bet it did not create the jobs they say it did. The numbers that the feds put out are fudged with the U3 and GDP.
Rove:
"What happened, though, was the -- the minor -- you know, the downturn in the economy was made much, much worse, significantly worse by the implosion of Fannie and Freddie in the summer of 2008."
Minor downturn?? The bundling of mortgage debt repackaged as new commercial paper -- i.e., derivatives -- was not minor but rather a pre-planned way to shift even more wealth to the Fortune 500 families. The teeming unwashed who were affected by the minor downturn can drown their sorrows in Horatin Algerisms and in the upcoming mandatory draft. Rove will nod wisely and scurry off to his faux-Georgian mansion in case Murdoch is on the phone.
"Secular humanism -- a fearless, realistic world view replete with doubt and scepticism that attempts to attain an unachievable state of equilibrium between and among the human qualities of reason, intuition, imagination, memory, ethics and common sense.
What this interview says about the state of the so-called 'media' in the US, and the relationship between crappy information and economic disaster is incredible.
Clearly, someone's pushing an agenda to Blame Obama and the Dems. It does seem rather stupidly obvious of them to call in K-k-k-karl Rove for the task.
Too bad Rove doesn't realize how badly he embarrasses himself here.
Really, I doubt there are enough mops on the planet to shine up Rove. I couldn't even watch the entire clip; it's simply too embarrassing.
that Greta gave him a dressing down for passing the buck and lying, didn't she? Oh wait, it's Fox. So I guess she just asked him to turn around, bend over, and spread 'em, so she could get her tongue in there deep.
Remember how the half-billion dollar bailout of the S&L industry was somehow all about Whitewater and not the Garn–St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
ead of in jail"
That is the real question here. The traitor rove is responsible, in part, for many illegal actions commited by the bush mis-Administration. He is truly a criminal with no conscience. This a.s does nothing but lie and cheat yet still gets major media attention. Why? I truly don't know but there it is. Were I to ignore a warrant whether state, federal or Congressional I would find myself in jail with no bail involved, period! But the likes of rove gets away without even a slap on the wrist to say say nothing of handcuffs and finger prints. There are basically two forms of "justice" in our country, one is for the "consumer or regular citizen depending on your definition of a citizen, and the one for the rich and connected. The "consumer-citizen "faces the full wrath of the law while the rich and connected pay their way out of any real punishment, even real and serious financial punishment. There it is, the real America.
peace
The love you take is equal to the love you make. John Lennon Paul Mc Cartney
Sickening, ain't it.
Also comes to mind to say nothing about being "immoral" but.....
The love you take is equal to the love you make. John Lennon Paul Mc Cartney
If Rove wasn't completely deluded he could not live with himself - we are not so easily fooled as Rove is.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
"...the government's borrowing a lot more money, and as a result, the private sector is making fewer loans to businesses. We've had private lending from banks go down like this, while government borrowing from--in essence, by issuing debt and getting people to buy it, has been going up like this," is he talking about all the money Bush Co. borrowed to fund Iraq and Afghanistan? Huh? Now he's trying to lay this at the feet of the current administration? You fat little weasel. You mini-Limbaugh. You don't fool everyone. If you still think that repeating a lie 5 times in public makes it true, let me sort you out on that. It doesn't. I just lit a candle for your enlightenment. Blessed be.
that Rove is claiming Dodd, Obama, and Frank filibustered (although it's still a mystery how Barney Frank could filibuster a SENATE bill while he was in the HOUSE) was S.190-109th Congress. Democrats did not filibuster it, and I'll challenge anybody to find a link to a news story from a credible news outlet (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNBC, etc.; not an Op-Ed piece written years after the fact) that says Democrats filibustered S.190 in 2005.
The truth is that the bill passed in the Banking committee (albeit on a party line vote, but it passed), and the Republican Senate leadership never put it on the senate agenda for a vote. It was never floored for a vote. If Rove isn't aware of this, maybe he should watch this report from his own Fox network where they specifically say at the 3:30 mark "that bill made it out of the senate finance committee on a party line vote, all of the Democrats voted against it, BUT FEARING THAT THEY DIDN'T HAVE THE VOTES TO PASS IT, REPUBLICANS DIDN'T EVEN BRING IT UP ON THE SENATE FLOOR. Senator Obama did not weigh in on that bill."
Here's the Fox video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM
Note also that the McCain quote, saying that the Housing GSEs need to be regulated is from Spring 2006, a year after S.190 had already died. McCain didn't jump on to that bill as a co-sponsor until 2006, a year after it had already died.
Why didn't the Republicans bring S.190 to the Senate floor for a vote? Because the DCI Group (a Republican run housing industry lobby group) had successfully lobbied enough Republican Senators to vote against it if it ever was table for a vote that the party whips knew it would lose. Most Democrats probably would have voted against it anyway, but they also knew that it had too little Republican support to pass. You never see Rove talking about that.
Here's the DCI story from CNBC:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/28108013
Finally, I'd like to point out that Fannie Mae ran perfectly as a government entity for 30 years, from 1938 to 1968, and only became a menace AFTER it was PRIVATIZED and had the ability to lobby Congress.
(Also, a note to Rove. You should probably lay off mentioning that Goldman Sachs and other investment houses were leveraged 60 to 1 when they collapsed given that it was your friend Phil Gramm who allowed that to happen, by passing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley and CFM Acts in 1999 and 2000. Those bills allowed banks and brokerage houses to merge, which wasn't the problem in and of itself. The problem was that those bills provided no legislative oversight for those new merged entities. Under the old laws, the amount of debt Banks were allowed to hold was regulated by the FED, and the amount of debt brokerages were allowed to hold was regulated by the SEC. Thanks to Gramm-Leach, the two types of institutions were allowed to merge, and escape any type of regulation. Those companies were regulated by neither the FED nor the SEC.)
Rove also forgot to mention that the evil Barney Frank voted FOR HR 1461 (in committee), which was the House bill to regulate Freddie and Fannie, and the bill passed with a bi-partisan vote in the House. Then it got to the Senate banking committee and they shelved it, where it died. Probably because Bush issued a statement saying he didn't support it, meaning he'd veto it anyway, so why bother voting on it in the Senate.
Byron Dorgan (D-ND) on Rachel Maddow
For a refresher: The Crisis of Credit Visualized
And from NOW on PBS: Credit and Credibility
Greed, conflicts of interest, regulators that don't regulate, predatory lenders, etc.
I even linked to a old Rachel Maddow clip on C&L.
[I suspect that one of us monitors mistakenly through out the baby with the bathwater when someone used vimeo to link conpsiracy theory video in the past. I haven't had time to investigate yet, though. Site monitor]
Explains the credit crisis step by step. Very informative.
[I found it. It was a tiny word in the filter that caught your comment. I took it out-Another Sitemonitor]
Hey, Rove, you and Perino need to get together and compare notes before you open your yaps.
Every problem America is experiencing, from the collapse of the economy, to the the criminal neo-con Iraqi war, the bungled Afghanistan war, to hitting every red light on the planet, is the Evil Rove, Bush, and Cheney's REPUBLICAN/CONSERVATIVE FAULT!
Why aren't they in jail and what ever happened to Rove's testimony about his involvement in the attorney firings? And why isn't any Democrat loudly blaming the REPUBLICAN/CONSERVATIVE Agenda so it doesn't happen ever again?
What about Global Crossing, Enron, Adelphia, Worldcom, Bernard Madoff and the whole sub-prime mortgage loan/credit swap schemes etc?
Isn't nine billion dollars unaccounted for in Iraq?
And then having two wars and tax cuts for the wealthiest at the same time?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
enron? never heard of it...
madoff? wazzat?
rove, like his dopplegangers on the other side of the aisle, never address the true root of the economic implosion--as the elite pols of both parties joined hands and celebrated the unshackled financialization/securitization of the american economy that transpired over the past 4 decades...
Rove Aka 'Bush's Brain', 'Turd Blossom', 'Evil Sh*thead'
" A Complete, Categorized List of the Bush Failures
publicintegrity.org — To compile this list of the most important federal failures of the past 8 years, a team of 13 reporters sifted through hundreds of inspectors general reports, GAO assessments, congressional oversight investigations, and news stories. Some 250 failures were nominated, from which editors selected more than 125."
http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations...
proof: the bush admin's stellar record
As long as they have too much excess capital Wall Street will figure out a scheme to fleece them destroying the economy while doing it. Once capital is in excess of what can be used effectively the excess is used to fuel speculation which leads to a boom in financial papers. But since this boom is an illusion it will become a bust as soon as people start to wake up from the dream. This leads to a bust. Unfortunately this usually brings down the real economy also.
I think you're right.
Too much speculation money chasing a big score.
Nobody's happy investing in a business that runs day to day making modest profits and employing Americans.
That's boring, everyone wants those exciting returns.
It's no longer a traditional capitalist system, it's inflated bubbles and Ponzi schemes. One big gambling casino where the tables are rigged against the little guy.
Maybe the tax codes need to be adjusted to help those that employ American workers and maybe actually produce something tangible.
Also take a bigger tax bite out of the profits of those who make huge profits from financial smoke and mirrors or buying up and tearing apart American businesses to sell them off like so much scrap.
Reward those whose actions help America be a stronger nation and tax those parasitic vampires whose actions make for a weaker America.
when clinton left office they was a three trillion dollar surplus!
Less then eight years later on C-span One of bush's people david oh the last name escapes me said we have a 10 trillion dollar debt.
That is 12 trillion in less then 8 years!
Idiot liars like rove should just STFU!
republicanism/conservatism is a mental illness that is killing America!
Are Karl and Greter going to the same plastic surgeon?? They are really starting to look alike.. When they start finishing each other's sentences, then it's time to contact their surgeon and get them to stitch their mouths shut.
Cometo think of it, that may a good idea generally !!!
Karl Rove is a sociopathic Liar, just like his friends Dickie & Georgie.
There is no question that the policies of the Rape-ublicans and the corpora-fascists who fund them (from Nixon on) have been put in place to shift the wealth of this nation and to destroy the middle class.
"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of Stupidity" - Frank Leahy
support the poor?
I've heard it before , yeahp , it's all Dodd and Barney Franks' fault , that's the standard line from the Fox propaganda network and their moron viewers , Bush and the Repugs had nothing to do with it . The right wing / Republican base are not rational common sense people living in reality , they are cult members and to them the facts and the truth are totally irrelevant . I heard Greenspan in an interview and even he said that Fannie Mae was just a small part of it . As for Rove , he is a lying piece of shit without conscience ... pretty much defines every Republican and "conservative" in DC .
Insanity , it is what it is , there is no understanding it .
Isn't it sickening to see the people who LOST getting all the air time? Just think about it. I do not think there has ever been a time in our history when this has gone on. The losers are the winners, and with President Obama kissing their butts every time he turns around, it just makes it worse. Maybe Obama had ought to go the whole hog and just turn himself into their sock puppet.
I am hoping that Obama will wake up. These people want to destroy him. They want his skin. They want his head on a stake, and he's just not getting it. They want to rewrite history until we have a Bush National Monument. Oh yeah. If we had just let Presdient Bush do what he wanted to do! Everything would have been all right! Sure. That is just the problem, Bush DID do what he wanted to do! For eight years! But it does no good to say this, because no one is saying it to them. It's a closed loop, and it is looking more and more like our wonderful new President is nothing more than one more link in the chain.
Karl Rove is not looking like that fat faced college kid anymore. You can kind of see his skull sticking out through his skin, these days.
Isn't it wonderful that we're mortal? I don't want to die, but that's only for me.
I thought Fox anchors had to be pretty and stupid.
Why do they keep hauling this sorry sack of dung out for his opinion. He's a lying piece of excrement, who no doubt will rot in hell some day. Republicans are so divorced from reality and refuse to take responsibility for their screw ups (ie, the economic collapse that occurred under Bush). To blame Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is absurd. It goes WAY beyond that. All the Bushies are still trying to polish his horrible legacy. After all, it was Karl Rove who was the brains behind Bush, the one who essentially came up with the idea that Bush was presidential.
Rove isn't the only one spouting this nonsense about Fannie and Freddie. A day or two ago one of the NPR programs had a three-person round-table discussion on the current economic situation. Dean Baker of CEPR was one of the guests, another was from a financial on-line magazine, and the third was from the Cato Institute. Guess what argument was advanced by the guy from Cato -- Fannie and Freddie are at the root of our current sluggish economy.
The Old Guard is pulling out the Old Argument as a New Mantra, probably figuring that Village Media (of which NPR is, sadly, becoming) won't remember the reality of the initial meltdown. Progressives will be forced to bring back the Old Realities just to put down this nonsense again and again. I think it's smokescreen stuff to confuse anyone who might be waffling on the subject.
The last three Republican presidents drove up huge deficits. It was a Democrat who reigned in spending and left behind a surplus. So how do the republithugs always manage to get away with claiming that they're the party of fiscal responsibility?
Probably over who was in control of Congress at the time.
But if Clinton weren't in charge, the gop would've handed even more of our money to the wealthy, and earlier.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
budget reconciliation act of 1993, which led to the biggest peacetime boom in the history of the USA. They want to take credit for the effects of it though since it worked so well.
Actually, it was the republican congress led by phil graham and john mccain that brought about the business deregulation that nearly sent us into another great depression. That is their legacy, not the Clinton economic boom that they attempted to prevent!
that isn't the truth. Come on, you don't expect KKKarl to wake up one morning and find his conscience hiding under his pillow. The man is a paid liar, so he has to make some shit up. Next week it will be something else completely different and totally unrelated to his 8 years of shame and ruin.
Haha what a joke. I wonder how Rove keeps going everyday. He must realize by now that he sucks at life.
And what was that BS about a jobless recovery during the 90s??? Unemployment was extremely high when Clinton took over from bush 41. By the end of the Clinton administration unemployment was at record lows! It didn't start going up again till bush 43 wrecked the economy and it has been high ever since. The jobless recovery was during bush 43, not Clinton, KARL.
During the Clinton years in the 90s unemployment was so low that companies were actually paying hiring bonuses in the thousands of dollars just to get people to work for them! Compare that to what happened after bush 43 took over, Karl, you lying moron.
...the repeated lie that "Obama said the stimulus would stop unemployment at 8 percent" is really working well on the low-information idiots out there. They don't know when (or if) Obama said it, or what the UE rate was when he was sworn in, or what the UE rate was on the day the stimulus was passed. All they know is that "Obama said" the stimulus would stop UE from topping 8%.
If the Dems had a brain, they'd fight this bullshit talking point by simply stating that team Obama (economists Romer and Bernstein) was talking about the stimulus he wanted, not the shitty stimulus that was passed due to GOPer opposition. It's not an honest reply, but it's no less dishonest than the distortion of what Team Obama said before he ever took office.
Of course, if the media was doing its' job, they'd have informed their viewers/readers that Romer/Bernstein have already stated that the 8% number was based on very faulty GDP numbers for 2008, which were revised after their calculations were delivered in the Obama report.
I won't hold my breath for fairness and accuracy from the MSM, they're too busy trying to make the next election a 'horse race' to give a shit about whether they're destroying this nation.
...sitting in jail?
Good question. G.W. and Cheney (turdblossoms' OTHER pink meat) all should be rotting in a jail cell.
Hey, after Gitmo closes...lets put 'em in there.
It would be fitting.
"Real Americans" don't want them in OUR country...
It wasn't Fannie and Freddie, it was the investment banks in collusion with mortgage companies, appraisers, and bond rating companies that caused the meltdown. But Fox never bothers with facts and neither does its audience.
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