From Investor’s Business Daily:

President Obama says the Occupy Wall Street protests show a “broad-based frustration” among Americans with the financial sector, which continues to kick against regulatory reforms three years after the financial crisis.

“You’re seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to fight efforts to crack down on the abusive practices that got us into this in the first place,” he complained earlier this month.

But what if government encouraged, even invented, those “abusive practices”?

Rewind to 1994. That year, the federal government declared war on an enemy — the racist lender — who officials claimed was to blame for differences in homeownership rate, and launched what would prove the costliest social crusade in U.S. history. (more…)

Organizing for America is back to being Obama for America now that the never ending campaign of President Obama is calling itself one again. Other than that, not much has changed with Team Lightbringer.

The campaign has just released a new video, “How Wall St. Reform is working for you”, that tells a nice story which, none too coincidentally, dovetails perfectly with the president’s caterwauling about “THE RICH!” during the debt ceiling negotiations.

The tale begins by detailing the lead-up to the meltdown that we’re all-too-familiar with at this point. Well, many of us are, anyway. On the other side of the political aisle many of the overwhelming contributing factors have all but been ignored. The video completely forgets to mention the roles that Fannie and Freddie played because honesty doesn’t fit the narrative here. And what, you ask, is that narrative?

That the government is here for you and your lives would be miserable without it, of course.

Even when it’s the government that helped bring the pain in the first place.

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“If the average citizen understood economics as well as it was understood by economists 200 years ago, most of the nonsense that’s done in Washington would be impossible politically.”

Our Uncommon Knowledge all-star guest, economist Thomas Sowell, joins us to talk Basic Economics.  He argues that Congress cannot help the economy recover, but instead needs to “let the economy recover.”  The so-called financial crisis wasn’t a financial crisis at all.  It was a housing crisis that overflowed into the financial world.  Congress’s meddling, by making new rules to increase homeownership and access to mortgages, was a primary reason that the housing crisis even existed at all.

Sowell goes on to discuss the disaster that is the Federal Reserve, the irrefutable truth that tax cuts lead to tax revenue (therefore invalidating the “we can’t afford tax cuts” argument), and the misconception that our health care system pre-Obamacare was broken.

He expresses frustration at the lack of articulate Republicans (although seems to be quite the Chris Christie fan!) and little belief that the US will maintain its status as the world’s greatest economy.

Watch the full episode below.

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If any further proof is needed that Barney Frank has been completely incompetent in his oversight of the financial services industry, one need look no further than this past week. Just one day after Frank sent a memo to the White House urging the President to reject the attempt by Republicans to include GSE reform in any financial reform bill, Freddie Mac requested an additional government bailout of $10.6 billion to cover losses incurred in the first quarter. Only one day (!) after Frank defended the GSE’s, writing that “as Fannie and Freddie operate today, going forward, there is no loss”.

There is no loss.

Rep. Frank, of course, has a distinguished history of ineptitude when it comes to regulation of the housing industry, and his role in the financial market collapse. But when it comes to avoiding culpability, he is second to no one in his ability to spin a web of deceipt and reinvent history.

“It was Tom DeLay’s fault, he was in charge back then. Republicans were the ones pushing home ownership on the poor. I only advocated for rental housing.”

Lies, demonstrable lies.

But let’s not forget that Frank became chair of the House Financial Services Committee in January 2007, after the Democrats re-took congress. While the housing market decline had already begun, it would be well over a year before the financial crisis really began to accelerate. Fannie and Freddie, in fact, were not placed under federal control until September 2008.

Surely Barney Frank, with his vast intellect and experience, saw these problems developing and was preparing to do everything within his power to reign in the mortgage industry, and stem this crisis, as he assumed his new leadership role. Right?

Source: CSPAN

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At a speech at Claremont McKenna to honor Martin Luther King Jr. in mid-January, the subject of Jesse Jackson Sr.’s new ire was the “banksters” — Wall Street fat cats, who are causing all of our problems.

Naturally, Jackson ignored his own role in housing crisis. That he made his argument against banks at one of the schools that produces the most investment bankers in the country did not go unnoticed – however. Those hoping to listen to watch his entire speech can watch it here.

Jackson decried the “biggest shift of wealth in American history in the last 9 months.” He assailed Obama’s so-called spending freeze. “We’ll freeze the rich in their wealth and the poor in their poverty. . . . Freeze? They have already frozen modifications of home foreclosures.” And he applauded Roosevelt’s “direct investment in the poor” and for “breaking up their ability to be indifferent to the poor.” “Banks serve at the privilege of the state and their mission is to lend and invest,” he said, not presumably to get paid back.

Of course much of the speech sounded like the usual socialist rhetoric, which he claimed Martin Luther King Jr. was trying to “take us there” – wherever there is.

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ACORN has been fairly criticized for its actions that led up to the mortgage crisis, which culminated in a huge rash of foreclosures last year.  While the tide appears to be waning, it’s a problem that is still occuring.

Specifically, ACORN strong-armed banks and worked with members of Congress, such as Barney Frank, to weaken credit standards in order for banks, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to fund risky mortgages.  Mortgages, of course, that stood little chance of ever being paid, as we witnessed last year.

But ACORN’s penchant for shaking down banks didn’t begin 2 years ago, or even 10 years ago.  Check out this article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution from 1988.  Grant Williams was an organizer for ACORN at the time ( I wrote here about his new gig at SEIU), and he managed to weasle ACORN into a bank’s proposed interstate merger.  From the article:

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