to have you here. it s troubling on so many levels. you have people are in a very, very tough position, their home is worth less, they may be out of a job, they re facing, you know, increasing bills, inflation, all of this in this possession that makes it really scary. you have to feeling, steve, that we re not getting out of it any time soon. no. and it s true, there are weather-related things that have held things back, so the second half will look better than the first half, but that s like a car gone from 30 miles an hour to, say, 38 or 40 when we should be going 70, this stage of a recovery. there are real head winds out there. the weak dollar, massive new regulations from health care and the so-called financial reform bill, the spending binge continues unabated, and uncertainty about taxes. martha: let me ask you this. there s been talk of depression, double-dip. do you think that s where we re headed? no. what we have is the equivalent of a bad flu, not enough to make you
of the, if not the top target for the gop in this congressional election? i would absolutely agree that he s one of the top targets. also for people across the country. small dollar donations coming along since we started this race from people who care about his role in fannie mae and freddie mac. some of the bad votes he s taken. financial reform bill, tarp, et cetera. yes, he s a target but there s reasons he s a target. they have to do with bad policy making over a long period of time and the harm he s done to this country. so, i think it is accurate to say there are a lot of people interested in this race. chris: sean beilat running against barney frank in what everyone assumed would be a safe district in massachusetts. at this point it looks like he s got a lead being but not as much of a lead as he would feel comfortable with. he just donated $200,000 of his own money so he s taking you serious mr. beilat, thank.
challenger. paul: he hasn t had a close race since 1980. since 1982. he s a serious guy, marine, worked if the private sector, harvard graduate, impressive guy. he has raced a raised a lot of money. frank brought bill clinton to campaign for him. there are more competitive races where you would think he would go. i was with beale last when the first radio ad ran it was supposed to be touting frank for his role in the so-called financial reform bill. instead it ended up being an attack on beilat for not supporting it. paul: i saw in the globe he s doing a little bit a quasi mea culpa on fannie mae and freddie mac on his role there? he said he thought the
here, though. sure. and accept, we do have a new financial reform bill, it does have resolution authority. so, for instance, if we were to do an audit of all the loans that were absorbed in fannie mae, all the loans absorbed into freddie mac, all the loans that were bought to the federal reserve. and we were to find that those loans were non-conforming to the government standards legally required, we are to find that those loans were fraudulent, we would in theory of that $1.6 trillion have the ability to put that money back to the big banks and use the resolution authority. at what point do we have to deal with the core aspect of the fannie and freddie were buying mortgages they shouldn t have been buying. i won t go down the whole chain. the int is everyone was doing something noncompliant with the standard put forth. the taxpayers paying the price for that, the banks are profiting from it, and there aren t any jobs in this country. we need a solution. well, two different are
crash course. tonight, controlling the message. candidate obama in 2008 promised to usher in a new era of transparency in his administration. part of what we re going to do is create transparency in how government works. one of the things i want to do is create more transparency and accountability in the system. on his first full day in office, president obama sent out a widely publicized memo to government agencies regarding his views on the freedom of information act. a collection of laws that exist to ensure that the public can gain access to public documents. he wrote, quote, all agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure in order to renew their commitment to the principles abiembodied in te law and as part of new financial reform bill the securities and exchange commission is virtually exempt from the access to information