Obama's Fannie Mae 'Connection'
"The McCain campaign is clearly exaggerating wildly in attempting to depict Franklin Raines as a close adviser to Obama on "housing and mortgage policy." If we are to believe Raines, he did have a couple of telephone conversations with someone in the Obama campaign. But that hardly makes him an adviser to the candidate himself -- and certainly not in the way depicted in the McCain video release"
Obama's Fannie Mae 'Connection' - Fact Checker I never said anything about Raines. He's just another questionable person that Obama now claims he did not have much to do with. The Washington Post painted him as an advisor of Obama. I guess Haslin was lying when the Washington Post printed that "In the four years since he stepped down as Fannie Mae’s chief executive under the shadow of a $6.3 billion accounting scandal, Franklin D. Raines has been quietly constructing a new life for himself. He has shaved eight points off his golf handicap, taken a corner office in Steve Case’s D.C. conglomeration of finance, entertainment and health-care companies and more recently, taken calls from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters.” (7/16/08)
"We give McCain some credit for weighing in on problems surrounding Fannie Mae,
even though he got involved after a comprehensive government report issued a loud alarm to anyone watching. However, his attempts to depict those efforts as some sort of early warning that could have lessened the current credit crisis just don't wash. All McCain was talking about then was the potential fallout of accounting troubles in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He didn't say anything about a freewheeling climate among creditors that had major financial institutions becoming badly leveraged on bad loans. We rule his claim Barely True. "
PolitiFact | McCain's 'warning' on Fannie & Freddie So McCain weighed in after a "comprehensive government report" detailing the accounting problems at Fannie Mae? Gawd! I would certainly hope so! Btw. . .that Bill died in the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs….the "Chairman of the Committee is Chris Dodd, the recipient of the largest donations from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae."
OpenSecrets | Update: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Invest in Lawmakers - Capital Eye
"
Corporations cannot give to candidates so the center's list adds up contributions from Fannie and Freddie employees and their families. Obama has received a lot of money during his presidential campaign, though, and Fannie and Freddie don't make his list of top 20 companies. (The top three companies with employees donating to Obama are Goldman Sachs, University of California, and Citigroup, according to the center.)
The New York Times looked at contributions from Fannie and Freddie's boards of directors and lobbyists, who are technically not employees. That
analysis found Fannie and Freddie-related contributors gave $116,000 to John McCain and his related committees, compared with $16,000 to Obama and his related committees.
Nevertheless, the center's information does reflect which candidates are getting the most money from Fannie and Freddie employees. There are other ways to parse the campaign finance numbers, but
McCain is correct when he says Obama got the second-most money on a list compiled by a respected, nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog. He would have been more accurate if he would have noted that he was talking about Fannie and Freddie employees. We rate his statement Mostly True"" PolitiFact | Their employees have donated