Here we go again...

[D_Raay]

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/041115/fannie_mae_5.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Mortgage giant Fannie Mae missed a regulatory deadline Monday for filing its third-quarter financial results after its independent auditor KPMG refused to sign off on the report.

Company shares fell in late trading as its accounting crisis deepened.


The government-sponsored company, recently cited by regulators in the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight for serious accounting problems and accused of earnings manipulation, notified the Securities and Exchange Commission that it would not file the third-quarter report on time.

The OFHEO regulators had ordered Fannie Mae to make massive recalculations, and the delay fueled speculation as to whether the company -- which finances one of every five home loans in the United States -- would restate earnings.

The SEC is investigating Fannie Mae's accounting.

[paulk]

yay socialism!

[Ace42]

Heh, mortgages are NOT socialism. Usury is the eptiome of capitalism. Or did I miss one-word irony?

[paulk]

The government-sponsored company . . .

[Ace42]

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.

Not exactly socialism, hmm?

[paulk]

I don't see how you can call this a "merger" by Mussolini's definition when the corporation is being investigated by the OFHEO, ordered to make massive recalculations, etc.

[Ace42]

I was merely making the point that usury does not make it socialist, and being government sponsored does not make it socialist, so I fail to see why you would suggest it is socialist.

[paulk]

Come on, use your noodle, silly! Government sponsorship--> the People's taxes funding the corporation--> public ownership. Not 100% ownership I'm assuming, but whether 51% or .0000051% it's public ownership all the same.

You're right though, this type of usury is purely (and most deliciously I might add!) capitalist. It's brilliant!

[Ace42]

That's like saying the army is "publicly owned" - just because your money pays for something, doesn't necessarily convey ownership. By that argument, you couldn't be arrested for breaking into welfare people's houses because "I own one 52 billionth of it."

Just because Lockheed Martin is given massive loans by the US government, doesn't make taxpayers share-holders.

[paulk]

The national army isn't a publicly traded corporation. You can't make the comparison with breaking into welfare projects (the existence of which is unconstitutional) either, because someone who owns 1/52000000000 of a company has no say as far as shareholders go.

[Ace42]

The public don't have any say in how that company operates either.

[paulk]

Exactly.

[Ace42]

Therefore not socialist. QED.

[paulk]

so·cial·ism ( P ) Pronunciation Key (ssh-lzm) n.
Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.

Whether or not the public "has a say" in the operations of a company has nothing to do with whether it's socialism or not.

[Ace42]

As I illustrated, you cannot confer the status of "ownership" just because your money is poured into something. US tax-payers in no way shape or form "own" Lockheed Martin, even though vast chunks of their taxes are used by the US government to support it.

The company may be government sponsored, but for it to be socialism, it has to be *nationalised* which is VERY very different.