but partisan nostalgia, revitalization and vision of reagan, but there is potentially a sort of newt gingrich nostalgia that could emerge around. he s trying to taut of his main talking points, substantively is that the balanced budget and the economic surplus of the 90s were his doings, right? that s one things he s come to own. in items of the newt grandiosity which i find fascinating because he s an amazing character study. a quoted i never encountered until james column in the daily caller, him writing notes to himself. in advance of giving a talk at gop a. talking about who newt is and what and what newt s role is. do i have this? like i m pat from saturday night live ?
stories but the key to the fannie and freddie story is not that they brought down the financial industry. it s that they modeled how to control the controllers. throughout the 90s, after the savings and loans. gretchen morganson writes about this. after savings and loans, the effort to require financial agencies, including first and foremost fannie and freddie, quasi government group, to have capital to support their loans, was serious, a serious drive killed by this money that was spread around. so, in that sense of buying off the regulators, fannie and freddie, what they modeled was critical. sure, it s dirt on newt gingrich now, but it is a lot of people who lost their homes. right. and i think so you see, it s part of the sort of economy of influence in washington that is sort of a broad and emerging theme. i want to talk more about that and i want to play some great some of newt s greatest hits on his his thoughts.
he s had a lot of lives and families. what i fine interesting about civilizing is that this could be particularly if tea party and occupy find a way to find point of contact and to really be collectively the pushback, the other side of that is not just the 1% sort of economically, it s a personality we call authoritarianism. that s a rough term politically but it means people who prefer order and prefer structure and are really really find it a very anxious and upsetting situation when you can t predict what s going to happen. so, they will take predi predictabili predictability, even over inequality i think that s a great point. here s newt gingrich i want to go out on newt gingrich making exactly this case, tying it all together in talking about occupy wall street. take a look at this, go to break and come right back.
i think senator mccain should have said to senator obama, are you prepared to give back all the money that fannie mae and freddie mac gave to you? are you prepared to fire your housing adviser who was paid $90 million over six years while helping ruin fannie mae? are you prepared to fire your adviser who was the former head of fannie mae, mr. johnson? are you prepared to disassociate yourself from chris dodd, the highest recipient of money from fannie mae? i think compared, for example, to senator chris dodd taking a below market interest mortgage from countrywide before it went broke, compared to chris dodd and barack obama being the number one and two recipients of money from fannie mae and freddie mac while they were going broke, i think it s hard to argue that a family feud is a big scandal. that is former house speaker
newt gingrich circa 2008, basically making a strong, passionate case that taking any money from freddie mac and fannie mae is reprehensible, corrupting and the top of everyone s mind when talking about these things. i am just amazed by the fact that newt gingrich is in this position. partly because i think i have this idea part of the frustration on the right and the tea party driving is the crony capitalism, that is something we on the left and right can unite around. if they nominate newt gingrich, that to me thinks that s not what s going on. that s not a concern. here s someone who could not be more of a creature of that same morally bankrupt establishment, right? tell me i m right. newt is one of these guys who seems to have rebis here because there s something about newt. he could have this rebirth here