An oft quoted line I've been using these days is from the 2001 film, "Swordfish", which stars John Travolta and Hugh Jackman and goes like this: Gabriel Shear - "Have you ever heard of Harry Houdini? Well he wasn't like today's magicians who are only interested in television ratings. He was an artist. He could make an elephant disappear in the middle of a theater filled with people, and do you know how he did that? Misdirection." Stanley Jobson - "What the f--k are you talking about?" Gabriel Shear - "Misdirection. What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes."
No better example of "misdirection", as defined by John Travolta's super-secret-agent Gabriel Shear, is what NY State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is doing now in pursuing civil charges against two Bank of America executives, Ken Lewis and Joe Price. Once again The Wall Street Journal, in today's paper, has done America a great service in highlighting what AG Cuomo would like everyone to be misdirected from - his tenure as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) during the Clinton administration.
It was during his tenure as HUD Secretary that he established new "Affordable Housing Goals" between 1997 and 1999 that required Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - the two GSE's involved in housing and mortgage finance - to expand their mortgage portfolio by some $2.8 TRILLION over the next 10 years. These new goals required a loosening of lending standards and directly led to Freddie and Fannie's massive purchases of sub-prime mortgages. Today the US taxpayer is on the hook for the failure of these two GSE's to the tune of $111 BILLION and possibly hundreds of billions more down the road.
The WSJ reminds us that back in August of 2008 Wayne Barrett, writing in the Village Voice, raised some serious issues with Andrew Cuomo's tenure at HUD and can be summed up with his words, "the country will be living with his HUD mistakes, ill- or well-intended, for a long time to come." And so, again I ask, what damage(s) have Ken Lewis and Joe Price inflicted upon their shareholders when Merrill Lynch has turned a profit for the bank, repaid their TARP funds with interest to the tax-payers, the share price of BAC has risen by more than $6.00 a share, and Ken Lewis has resigned as CEO? What are these "sins" compared to Andrew Cuomo's failed policies at HUD that have ruined two publicly traded GSE's, crippled the mortgage market, and put the US tax-payer on the hook for hundreds of BILLIONS in liabilities? And he wants to bring this sense of sound judgement to Albany as governor?
No better example of "misdirection", as defined by John Travolta's super-secret-agent Gabriel Shear, is what NY State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is doing now in pursuing civil charges against two Bank of America executives, Ken Lewis and Joe Price. Once again The Wall Street Journal, in today's paper, has done America a great service in highlighting what AG Cuomo would like everyone to be misdirected from - his tenure as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) during the Clinton administration.
It was during his tenure as HUD Secretary that he established new "Affordable Housing Goals" between 1997 and 1999 that required Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - the two GSE's involved in housing and mortgage finance - to expand their mortgage portfolio by some $2.8 TRILLION over the next 10 years. These new goals required a loosening of lending standards and directly led to Freddie and Fannie's massive purchases of sub-prime mortgages. Today the US taxpayer is on the hook for the failure of these two GSE's to the tune of $111 BILLION and possibly hundreds of billions more down the road.
The WSJ reminds us that back in August of 2008 Wayne Barrett, writing in the Village Voice, raised some serious issues with Andrew Cuomo's tenure at HUD and can be summed up with his words, "the country will be living with his HUD mistakes, ill- or well-intended, for a long time to come." And so, again I ask, what damage(s) have Ken Lewis and Joe Price inflicted upon their shareholders when Merrill Lynch has turned a profit for the bank, repaid their TARP funds with interest to the tax-payers, the share price of BAC has risen by more than $6.00 a share, and Ken Lewis has resigned as CEO? What are these "sins" compared to Andrew Cuomo's failed policies at HUD that have ruined two publicly traded GSE's, crippled the mortgage market, and put the US tax-payer on the hook for hundreds of BILLIONS in liabilities? And he wants to bring this sense of sound judgement to Albany as governor?
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