Rick Santelli is a joy to watch. Every once in a while, the CNBC on-air editor just can’t take the crap anymore. Tuesday was one of those days.
This time he went off on Rep. Paul Kanjorski’s (D-PA), who claimed Democrats’ just couldn’t include reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in their financial regulation bill because it was “too complicated.”
“It’s too complicated?” Santelli roared. “You think taxpayers that go to work to pay the money you are subsidizing, it will end up a half a trillion, do you think they think complicated is an excuse?”
The Financial Times reports the dire reality of the situation:
Fannie Mae said on Monday it would need an additional $8.4bn in aid, as the US government-controlled mortgage finance company continued to suffer heavy losses on its bad loans…Fannie Mae’s appeal for help comes on the heels of a similar plea last week by smaller rival Freddie Mac, which asked for an additional $10.6bn cash infusion. The latest requests for aid bring the total amount of taxpayer dollars drawn down by these companies to $148bn since the 2008 government-led bail-out. “Anthony Sanders, a senior scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, called Fannie and Freddie ‘our own Greek tragedy.’ Mr. Sanders estimated that total taxpayer liability was about $8,000bn for the combined companies, including public debt and loan guarantees.”
You know what else is really complicated? Doing your taxes. But the government probably won’t accept that as an excuse for not doing them.
Source: Financial Times
