Watt Cut From Same Cloth As Fannie Swindler Raines

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

Housing: If you wonder what kind of job Mel Watt would do leading the regulatory agency that controls Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, look no further than his pal Franklin Raines.

No one would think of putting Raines, who in 2005 left Fannie's helm under an ethical cloud, in charge of regulating Fannie or Freddie, together responsible for about 90% of all new mortgages. But Obama's choice for that job is cut from the same cloth.

Rep. Watt, whom the president has tapped to run the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is a lot like Raines, and not just because they're both Democrats.

Raines plundered Fannie's coffers while recklessly expanding the reach of the government-backed mortgage giant to execute public housing policy for the poor. As a chief architects of the subprime mortgage disaster, he ultimately fleeced taxpayers.

A former top Clinton aide, Raines believed homes should be "distributed" by government, not earned and purchased by buyers. He whined "minorities have yet to achieve parity in home ownership" and vowed to use Fannie and its Treasury guarantee as "a mediating structure that bends the financial system to create homeowners."