Look what Santa Obama left for failed fatcats

Hey what was that about checking "who's naughty and who's nice"

Seems twas the night before Christmas, and all through DC,

Santa Obama decided to leave a blank check for failed mortgage firms

Paid for by you and me  

Yep. See the Washington Post for the gory details

The Obama administration pledged Thursday to provide unlimited financial assistance to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, an eleventh-hour move that allows the government to exceed the current $400 billion cap on emergency aid without seeking permission from a bailout-weary Congress.

The Christmas Eve announcement by the Treasury Department means that it can continue to run the companies, which were seized last year, as arms of the government for the rest of President Obama's current term.

But even as the administration was making this open-ended financial commitment, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac disclosed that they had received approval from their federal regulator to pay $42 million in Wall Street-style compensation packages to 12 top executives for 2009.

The compensation packages, including up to $6 million each to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's chief executives, come amid an ongoing public debate about lavish payments to executives at banks and other financial firms that have received taxpayer aid. But while many firms on Wall Street have repaid the assistance, there is no prospect that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will do so.

Where to start?

• the questionable constituitionality of making a monetary committment in the absence of congressional authorization. Jeez, where I went to law school my con law class taught me the executive could only spend money appropriated by Congress. Has the Constitution been amended since then to enable the Treasury to appropriate their own funds?
• The fact that over a year after the collapse of the two GSE's neither Treasury Secretary Geithner nor Senate Banking Committee chairman Dodd have any inkling as to an exit strategy for these failed firms
• That after making a huge brouhaha over the AIG bonuses that the Feds plan to approve equally large bonuses to executives of firms which are also failing to earn any money
•  The fact that $400 Billion of taxpayers subsidies are not enough, and that these firms appear to be well on the way to becoming perpetual money pits for the taxpayers?

Help me out here. We are supposed to believe that universal health care is going to be deficit neutral when that opinion is coming from the same people who told us everything was hunky dory with Fannie Mae 

But while Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, insisted that the firms known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were “in sound situation” and “good shape,” he also ripped the administration and the Federal Reserve Bank........ 

Dodd also warned the television talk show’s host that to suggest Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were “in major trouble is not accurate.”

 Only off by what, $400 Billion...and counting...Chris.....Heckuva job you're doing fixing those banks. Going to see a reform package in this Congress,,,,,hey, it's only 15 months after the meltdown, why rush?.....maybe it will be chock full of goodies for ACORN like what Fan/Fred execs got this Christmas.

A modest proposal for our "leaders" in DC. How about fixing the financial mess before you decide to play doctor for the whole country.