‘60 Minutes’ Financial Crisis Exposé Ignores Election Ramifications
With nine days left before Election Day, “60 Minutes” aired a segment Sunday evening addressing a complex investment tool at the heart of the current financial crisis without fully explaining the presidential campaign ramifications behind the laws that made the market meltdown almost inevitable.
Despite accurately calling credit default swaps “The Bet That Blew Up Wall Street,” CBS didn’t properly inform viewers that George W. Bush had absolutely nothing to do with the Clinton-signed legislation that deregulated them, and that frequent campaign statements by Barack Obama and Joe Biden blaming the current financial crisis on Bush economic policies are therefore completely false.
The producers also chose not to expose the key Democrats — most notably House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cali.) and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) — that voted in favor of this legislation back in 2000 but have in recent weeks dishonestly blamed President Bush for the current crisis.
Instead, CBS’s Steve Kroft offered viewers a very general and nonpartisan political background to the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (video embedded right):
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Source URL:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/10/27/60-minutes-financial-crisis-piece-ignores-election-ramifications
Links:
[1] http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/06/20/olbermann-blames-mccain-bipartisan-clinton-signed-enron-loophole
[2] http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h106-4541
[3] http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2000-540
[4] http://clerk.house.gov/evs/1999/roll570.xml
[5] http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=106&session=1&vote=00354
[6] http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=106&session=1&vote=00354
Burning Down The House: What Caused Our Economic Crisis? V2
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=…
YouTube – Shocking Video Unearthed Democrats in their own words Covering up the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Scam that caused our Economic Crisis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7…
•3 days ago
•- 19 hours left to answer.
See the facts at link below
Anatomy of a Train Wreck: Causes of the Mortgage Meltdown
October 3, 2008
by Stan J. Liebowitz
http://www.independent.org/pdf/policy_reports/2008-10-03-trainwreck.pdf
by 
April 11, 2010 at 12:47 pm
I’ve posted this before and got the same, lame, brain-washed, cult-follower responses from the Obama crowd:
“So What?”
“Obama 2008″
“It was the Repubs!”
Their Messiah could literally rub their faces in crap and they’d think it was perfume.
Everybody KNOWS it was the Dems, but they refuse to admit it. Like their leader, every time they move their mouths, the truth fails to fall out.
April 11, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Until Barney Frank and Chris Todd are forced to testify, then any hearings by Congress are a farce.
April 11, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Sorry But the Global melt Down comes from the Deregulation of AIG, ML, LB’s, which Phill Gramm wrote (remember Enron). See Pew Report on global meld down.
Can’t blame it on the Dem’s
April 11, 2010 at 2:21 pm
I’ve got TWO words for ya:
GRAMM and DEREGULATION.
(nice blog crap, by the way)
April 11, 2010 at 3:19 pm
That’ right. Bush had nothing to do with the original legislation. However, he had 6 years to overturn it if he thought it was such a bad idea.
There is blame on both sides.
There is no innocent party in this mess. They all got us into it.
April 11, 2010 at 3:33 pm
You wouldn’t expect CBS to give the whole story, would you? The MSM is so enamoured of the Democrats they would condone them if they screamed FIRE in a crowded theater. If anyone else did it, they would be piously appalled.
April 11, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Yes I think this is proof
Hey nice research Good stuff But well you do know Liberals and Democrats dont listen to or look at facts. Well not ones that dont support what they already believe or want to believe. I mean you do know that right. they believe in what they want to not what is. and the only thing that is real is words the words of hope and change
No one wants real change or to give those who have nothing hope just the words to give the hope of change not real change.
Hey again good stuff – good links
thanks
I guess that means it will be deleted soon
April 11, 2010 at 4:36 pm
That was Republican majority in senate and Phil Gramm who worked for deregulation, Bill Clinton was just a tool. What did Republicans do in last 6 years when they had majority in senate and it was their president ?
Green Span already accepted his mistake so don’t blame democrats for it, You Republicans are full of it.
EDIT :
I don’t believe any of Faux Noise info.
April 11, 2010 at 4:56 pm
Not only did they ignore bush trying to fix this, they caused it with bill clinton’s agenda’s.
April 11, 2010 at 5:52 pm
I guess that is why The economy was much better under a democrat!
April 11, 2010 at 6:40 pm
It is so weird. It is like the liberals, especially the young ones, have been completed blinded so they cannot see the truth. I wonder about the rest of us who can clearly see the economic horror that lies ahead if Obama wins. How/why are we immune? The immunity seems to cross all races, ages, religions and classes. Weird.
April 11, 2010 at 7:31 pm
Give me a break. Did you really think 60 Minutes would do an expose’ that included Democrats?
I guess they don’t know how to Google You Tube for Fannie Mae. Let me guess –They didn’t know You Tube existed.
April 11, 2010 at 7:55 pm
Not to mention this article from the New York Times published Sept. 11 2003
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.ht...
The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.
Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.
The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.
~~~~~~
”There is a general recognition that the supervisory system for housing-related government-sponsored enterprises neither has the tools, nor the stature, to deal effectively with the current size, complexity and importance of these enterprises,” Treasury Secretary John W. Snow told the House Financial Services Committee in an appearance with Housing Secretary Mel Martinez, who also backed the plan.
Mr. Snow said that Congress should eliminate the power of the president to appoint directors to the companies, a sign that the administration is less concerned about the perks of patronage than it is about the potential political problems associated with any new difficulties arising at the companies.
~~~~~~~
”The regulator has not only been outmanned, it has been outlobbied,” said Representative Richard H. Baker, the Louisiana Republican who has proposed legislation similar to the administration proposal and who leads a subcommittee that oversees the companies. ”Being underfunded does not explain how a glowing report of Freddie’s operations was released only hours before the managerial upheaval that followed. This is not world-class regulatory work.”
Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.
”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”
Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.
”I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said.
April 11, 2010 at 8:13 pm
Have voted mostly with conservatives over the years, so I can’t answer like we have a different ideology. However I still blame Jimmy Carter for the economic disaster while he was in the oval office. Yes I know he did not have direct fiscal responsibility to our country but he was supposed to be a good steward and to me, having stewardship means taking care of. While I cannot overlook the overwhelming aspects (911 for example) of President Bush’s term I do believe he failed to be a good steward and feel like people will be speaking of him the same way they do Jimmy Carter, after a few years have passed.
Perhaps the reason CBS didn’t take the blame off of the president was; he does have a figurative role and unlike Barney Franks it may be that during this crisis he should have cried wolf louder and more often. I’m saying this and I know he must have been knee deep in liberal BS regarding the surge and attacks from the first year of democratic hopefuls dominating the press. But it is what it is and he did run and get elected to the highest and most powerful position in the world, should we give him a free ride?