Unbelievable

By Liam Day
November 18th, 2008

I have expressed on here before my, well, I guess my disdain for the politically connected way Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have operated in the past. One of their primary means for insuring their protection from Congressional oversight was largesse. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were huge donors to various (mostly D.C.) non-profits, many of which were connected to one or the other of the major parties or their representatives. This was bad enough when the lending giants’ debt was only guaranteed by the federal government. I had hoped that, having been directly bailed out with taxpayers’ money, this practice would cease.

Well, guess again. However, this time it isn’t the agencies who are at fault. Non-profits, trained to suck on the teat of the federal government, are coordinating efforts through the Center for Nonprofit Advancement to insure that the $47 million Fannie and Freddie donated last year will be available again this year. According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy:

The association is coordinating its second campaign to press Congress to ensure that donations from the lenders don’t dry up in the current economic downturn.

Tomorrow, association members are being asked to e-mail their Congressional representatives about the matter. A similar effort was made in October, which resulted in a letter from six members of Congress to James B. Lockhart II, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Mr. Lockhart is the conservator placed in charge of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after the U.S. Treasury Department bailed-out the troubled lenders in September.

Now that there are direct taxpayer dollars in the equation, this is absolutely unacceptable.