Lehman Brothers: Obama’s Rezko-Auchi conflict of interest

via RBO News & Views

Lehman Brothers: Obama’s Rezko-Auchi conflict of interest

[Nadhmi Auchi is an Iraqi whose Baathist ties go back to 1959. A formerly high-ranking official in Iraq’s Oil Ministry, Auchi left Iraq at the end of the 1970s. His wealth then grew exponentially as a procurer of arms for Saddam Hussein’s government during the Iran–Iraq war. He is now one of the richest men in Britain. Saddam Hussein in 1995 selected BNP, which later merged with Paribas, as the sole conduit bank handling Oil-for-Food transactions. This Clinton-era arrangement was changed in 2001 by the incoming Bush administration.

Auchi was also a key financial backer for Chicago political fixer and dual US-Syrian citizen Tony Rezko. This writer explained the complex web of relationships in an August 24 article titled, “Iraqi Billionaire Threatens Reporters Investigating Rezko Affair”:]

Obama - Rezko - Auchi - Saddam Hussein?

mini flashback

a flashforward

Barack Obama's Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Connection

[A group called the Center for Responsive Politics keeps track of which politicians get Fannie and Freddie political contributions. The top three U.S. senators getting big Fannie and Freddie political bucks were Democrats and No. 2 is Sen. Barack Obama.

Now remember, he's only been in the Senate four years, but he still managed to grab the No. 2 spot ahead of John Kerry — decades in the Senate — and Chris Dodd, who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.]

Billion-Dollar Scandal Not Ready for Prime Time

[ Analysts are predicting that Fannie Mae will have to compensate for $11 billion in accounting errors. To put this in perspective, Enron overstated its earnings by $567 million: 5 percent of Fannie Mae’s fiasco. Since February 2004, Fannie Mae’s stock has plummeted from a high of about $80 a share to roughly $55 per share. That’s a decline of 31 percent, or a loss of more than $20 billion in value to stockholders. Despite these incredible losses and errors, as well as three separate investigations, the broadcast media have ignored Fannie’s decline.



While the figures behind Enron were calculator-busting, the problems at Fannie Mae were greater: roughly $11 billion in earnings restatements. That’s about 19 times more than Enron’s accounting “errors.” Although broadcast news offered wall-to-wall coverage of the endless commas and zeros behind the Enron collapse, Fannie Mae’s staggering problems and the resignation of six top executives, including the CEO and chief financial officer, received almost no TV news attention.



Connections to the halls of power can make any story front-page news. Fannie Mae and Enron had no shortage of those. They employed two of the most generous campaign contributors in the nation. The media tried to link the leadership at Enron to the Bush administration and to several key figures in Congress. On the other hand, the broadcast media had nothing to say about the unambiguous connections between Fannie Mae board members and the Clinton administration.



In contrast, neither NBC nor any other broadcast outlet would have needed to search hard for political ties in the Fannie Mae debacle. Former Chief Executive Officer Franklin Raines and former Vice Chairman Jamie Gorelick were both instrumental figures in the Clinton administration. The print media were candid about Fannie’s political connections. In a Dec. 23, 2004, article, Albert Crenshaw of The Washington Post revealed that Franklin Raines “was a director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration, and his name was mentioned as a possible Treasury Secretary had Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) been elected president.”

Jamie Gorelick was Deputy Attorney General under Clinton. Fannie Mae board member Jack Quinn was the attorney for pardoned tax evader Marc Rich. Fannie also has one of the largest lobbying budgets in Washington. A Feb. 24, 2005, article in The Washington Post reported that Fannie “paid its lobbying corps about $5 million in the first six months of last year.”]



Fanny, Freddie, and Obama

[“You look at Obama’s economic advisers, the guys he has counted on from day one and who have raised him a ton — and I mean a ton — of money: Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson, both of them are waist to neck deep in the mortgage debacle.”

Both Raines and Johnson have served as CEO of Fannie Mae, with Raines taking over from Johnson. Both are key political and economic advisers to Obama.]

Franklin Raines’ Criminal Enterprise and Barack Obama, His Accomplice **UPDATE** Top Recipients By $/Yr in Congress

once again the connections
are endless, the MSM silent..