Monday, November 17, 2008

Obama's Broken Promise No.3

According to an ABC news story things inside the Beltway are beginning to look a lot like...well business as usual:

"One of Obama's top transition team members, Thomas Donilon, oversaw an aggressive, backdoor lobbying campaign by mortgage giant Fannie Mae to undermine the credibility of a probe into the firm's accounting irregularities, according to a 2006 government report on the company.

The effort -- which reportedly included attacks on the funding for the oversight agency, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, and an attempt to launch a separate investigation into OFHEO itself -- was ultimately unsuccessful, and regulators eventually discovered top Fannie Mae executives had been manipulating the company's financial reporting to maximize their bonuses.


Facing accusations of misstating its earnings from 1998 to 2004, Fannie Mae settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission for $400 million in 2006, although it did not admit any wrongdoing."

Faces change but the games continue. Obama's win was about marketing a brand not selling a substance.

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