---

Dodd-Frank is not “financial reform,” it’s more Big Government lunacy
...A front-page Wall Street Journal article this week noted that “far from Wall Street, President Barack Obama’s financial regulatory overhaul … will leave tracks across the wide-open landscape of American industry.” The Journal notes that “the bill will touch storefront check cashiers, city governments, small manufacturers.”

But one thing it will leave totally untouched are the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which new research by Congress’ Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and other bodies shows was even more of a prime factor in the subprime boom than originally assumed. The Federal Housing Finance Agency now reports that Fannie and Freddie purchase 40 percent of of all private-label subprime securities in 2003 and 2004. Indeed, according to Edward Pinto, housing scholar and Fannie’s former chief credit officer, millions of mortgages to borrowers with credit scores of less than 660, considered by prominent researchers to be the dividing line for subprime loans, had been labeled by Fannie and Freddie as prime going back as early as 1993....

...n addition, the bill contains provisions that will empower special interests at the expense of ordinary shareholders and that may exceed the limits of the U.S. Constitution. The bill’s “orderly liquidation” authority will allow the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department not just to bail out firms whose failure is deemed to be a threat to “financial stability,” but to actually seize firms that are not even asking for a bailout. The “proxy access” provisionswould override longstanding state rules in corporate director elections and force companies and their shareholders to subsidize director elections by special interest-shareholder — such as unions, enviromentalists and others. This would give these groups leverage to cut deals with management to push through agenda items, such as the “card check” abolition of secret ballots in labor in labor election and carbon cap-and-tax reductions, that they can’t get through the halls of Congress....