All you need to know about Democrats' "Comprehensive Financial Reform" bill: the multi-trillion dollar time-bomb called Fannie Mae isn't addressed

All of the reforms forced down the throats of the American people by Democrats in Congress are helpfully termed "comprehensive". Consider the terminology, casually tossed about while ignoring the fundamental failure of every, large-scale federal program in history: "Comprehensive Immigration Reform"... "Comprehensive Health Care Reform"... "Comprehensive Financial Reform"...

Of the latter, 2,000-plus pages are devoted to revamping the entire financial "sector". The result is an orgy of central planning, authoritarian controls, and Democrat skulduggery that Nikita Krushchev would love --- and James Madison would despise.

As for the effectiveness of the reforms: the Democrats have completely ignored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs), which were the lynch-pins of the 2008 economic meltdown. The reasons are many:

• Fannie and Freddie have been described as "job-shops for out-of-work Democrats"; during the Clinton era, they were tasked with subsidizing zero-documentation (no proof of income) loans under HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo and Attorney General Janet Reno;

• Fannie and Freddie's executives were all loyal Democrat cronies -- from Jamie Gorelick, to Jim Johnson, to Franklin Raines -- who took a couple of hundred million in compensation while touching off a multi-billion dollar accounting scandal. All the while, they extolled the virtues of the GSEs' economic health, knowing full well that they were teetering on the brink;

• Fannie and Freddie were protected from Republican scrutiny despite numerous inquiries into financial shenanigans, outsized pay for executives, bogus audits and the like. Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, in particular, threatened every sort of legislative roadblock if the GOP pursued investigations into the GSEs. The latter even conducted an 8-year sexual affair with a Fannie Mae executive -- a prototypical conflict-of-interest;

In short, the GSEs remain a multi-trillion dollar, ticking time-bomb. They own nearly $6 trillion in residential mortgages, with millions of individual bad loans that are still sitting on their books.

Yet the Democrats' "comprehensive financial reform" package completely ignores the critical, government-sponsored malignancies at the very epicenter of the meltdown.


Oh, goodie: Moody's Says Provisions Of Fin Reg Reform Bill May "Trigger Disruptions" In Credit Market


Related: The Fannie Mae testimony that will make you scream in anger.