ALG Demands that Dodd Bill Be Scrapped, “Start Over with Real Reform” of Fannie, Freddie, Fed, FHA

April 20th, 2010, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today demanded that the Senate “scrap the Dodd financial takeover bill and start over with real reform of the government institutions that caused the crisis to begin with.”

“In short, the Dodd bill does nothing at all to prevent another crisis from occurring, and Senators should be wary about following Dodd off the cliff,” Wilson said, adding, “Dodd is asking many of his colleagues to stand for election defending his legislation following the same recipe that caused his own career to go down in flames.”

“Meanwhile, Dodd himself is not willing to run on this nonsense. The voters of Connecticut have rejected Dodd’s corruption. He’s not representing them. To this day, he is representing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He is representing the ill-conceived social policy of pushing loans on those who cannot afford them despite unacceptable rates of default.”

Wilson continued, “In sum, he is representing government control of the entire financial system under the false premise that tighter control will better manage the unintended consequences of foolish government policies.”

Wilson said Dodd bears a “great deal of responsibility” for causing the financial crisis. “Dodd has no business leading the Senate’s effort to ‘reform’ the financial system. He is the most corrupt Senator in U.S. history who protected Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from being reined in while the housing bubble was inflated, and who personally benefited for being a shill for banks with VIP treatment in his loan from Countrywide.”

In a recent oped, Wilson wrote that “Putting Chris Dodd in charge of writing the financial ‘reform’ bill is like calling in Don Corleone to write an anti-crime bill. To expect anything but a whitewash that protects the real criminals is naïve at best.”

Wilson said the legislation itself proves it: “The Dodd bill does not even mention Fannie or Freddie, government entities that misrepresented the quality of mortgage-backed securities to investors.”

“Instead, it leaves the government in charge of the GSE’s, expands the powers of the Federal Reserve which printed the money that fueled the housing bubble, does nothing to rein in the Federal Housing Administration that degraded credit quality by lowering down payments, and leaves in place the Community Investment Act regulations that strong-armed banks to give out loans to lower income Americans who could not pay them back in the first place,” Wilson explained.

“The only right thing to do in this instance is to scrap Dodd’s plan and to start over with a plan to sell of Fannie and Freddie piece by piece, to bring transparency to the Federal Reserve and to restrict their easy money policy, restore prudent lending standards, and repeal the Community Reinvestment act once and for all,” Wilson concluded.

Interview Availability: Please contact Rebekah Rast at (703) 383-0880 or at rrast@getliberty.org to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.

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