Saturday, December 3, 2011

Newt Gingrich Backed and touted Freddie Mac in 2007

H/T Paige

I received a tip a couple of nights ago about Gingrich and a 2007 interview posted on Freddie Mac's website in which he touted the vitues of Freddie Mac. The Wall Street Journal has picked it up however the website Verum Serum  was on top of this before the WSJ was.

The Wall street Journal reports:
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich touted the virtues of Freddie Mac's business model in an interview published by the company in April 2007, remarks that contrast with the candidate's recent statements that he had warned the company of impending financial disaster.
The interview was featured on Freddie Mac's website for several months in 2007 when he was a paid consultant to the company and Freddie Mac was struggling to address mounting financial problems as the housing boom was turning to bust.
From Verum Serum:
I did a little digging on the Internet Archive and it sure looks to me like Gingrich delivered on at least part of what was suggested above. From a section of Freddie Mac’s web site in April 2007 labeled “Policy Talk“:

    Q: A key element of the entrepreneurial model is using the private sector where possible to save taxpayer dollars and improve efficiency. And you believe the GSE model provides one way to use the private sector.

    Gingrich: Some activities of government – trash collection is a good example – can be efficiently contracted out to the private sector. Other functions – the military, police and fire protection – obviously must remain within government. And then there are areas in which a public purpose would be best achieved by using market-based models. I think GSEs provide one of those models. I like the GSE model because it provides a more efficient, market-based alternative to taxpayer-funded government programs. It marries private enterprise to a public purpose. We obviously don’t want to use GSEs for everything, but there are times when private enterprise alone is not sufficient to achieve a public purpose. I think private enterprise alone is not going to be able to help the Gulf region recover from the hurricanes, and government will not get the job done in a very effective or efficient manner. We should be looking seriously at creating a GSE to help redevelop this region. We should be looking at whether and how the GSE model could help us address the problem of financing health care. I think a GSE for space exploration ought to be seriously considered – I’m convinced that if NASA were a GSE, we probably would be on Mars today.

    Certainly there is a lot of debate today about the housing GSEs, but I think it is telling that there is strong bipartisan support for maintaining the GSE model in housing. There is not much support for the idea of removing the GSE charters from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. And I think it’s clear why. The housing GSEs have made an important contribution to homeownership and the housing finance system. We have a much more liquid and stable housing finance system than we would have without the GSEs. And making homeownership more accessible and affordable is a policy goal I believe conservatives should embrace. Millions of people have entered the middle class through building wealth in their homes, and there is a lot of evidence that homeownership contributes to stable families and communities. These are results I think conservatives should embrace and want to extend as widely as possible. So while we need to improve the regulation of the GSEs, I would be very cautious about fundamentally changing their role or the model itself.
Note: GSE is an acronym for “Government Sponsored Enterprise”, with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being the most prominent examples (though they are now under full government conservatorship).

Oh, there's lots more at Verum Serum and you'll find it HERE.

How's all that from their PAID 'Historian'? If you believe Gingrich wasn't lobbying for them, then I have a Bridge for sale that should interest you!

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6 comments:

Ann said...

How does Gingrich get away with saying he was only an historian for them?

larry said...

So Gingrich is a liar. What else is new.

Terrye said...

Hypocrite...

Anonymous said...

Details, details . . .

Don't you guys know that what Newt has to SAY, that it doesn't matter what he DOES.

At least that's what he told Marrianne.

-Martha

Anonymous said...

Sorry, that sentence didn't make sense.

Should read: Don't you guys know that what Newt has to SAY is SO IMPORTANT, that it doesn't matter what he DOES.

-Martha

Anonymous said...

I wonder how the ABR crowd will rationalize that Newt is still the best GOP candidate with this piece of information? They will probably say that this is a contrived conspiracy theory fabricated by the LSM. Gingrich is a lying PIG.