Franklin Raines

Franklin Raines is the former chairman and chief executive officer of the Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae, and served as director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Bill Clinton.

Raines serves on the advisory board of the Aspen Institute's Health Stewardship Project.

Fannie Mae
In this CSPAN video (http://www.youtube.com/v/_MGT_cSi7Rs&hl=en&fs=1) you can see Franklin Raines saying that Fannie Mae's loans "are so riskless that their capital for holding should be under 2%". (Banks consider themselves in trouble at 4%.) When the government-guaranteed loans defaulted, there weren't enough funds to guarantee the loans. Investors around the world pulled their money out of GSE related financial vehicles, creating investor-panic and resulting in a collapse of many economies around the world.

In 2004, Franklin Raines earned $1.1 Million in bonuses plus his $526,000 salary as chairman and CEO of Fannie Mae. If he had followed the rules, there would have been no bonus', no 2008 financial crises and no need for a government bailout.

Tobacco document information
In 1998, Congress and the Clinton White House proposed legislation to raise cigarette prices by $1.10/pack, restrict cigarette ads and sporting events sponsored by tobacco companies and aim to reduce youth smoking by 60 percent over 10 years. Tobacco company representatives vowed to go to court to fight the restrictions if they were enacted. When tobacco company representatives walked out of negotiations over the bill, then-budget director Franklin Raines said on the ABC television talk show This Week with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts, "The companies should come back. We would welcome them back. But it's not necessary. Certainly no one's going to beg them to come back" to the negotiations. Raines said that the Supreme Court has limited the government's ability to restrict tobacco advertising, but that the limitations are not absolute. "We think we can have some significant restrictions" that are constitutional, he said.

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Aspen Institute / Aspen Strategy Group
 * U.S. Office of Management and Budget

External articles
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