May

27

Congressman Oxley’s - Freddie Mac Story Dies

May 27, 2006 |

We reported that WLIO revealed an investigation into Oxley’s apparent ethical misconduct. As one of the highest ranking members in the House he decided for no real apparent reason to step down. So it would have (or should have been) big news. Since the WILO report there has been no further news on it. For some reason the story just died.

So some digging was needed to find what was going on. Thankfully we don’t need to rely on the MSM for all the details. Campaign Legal Center reports:

In a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), the Campaign Legal Center urged that Rep. Michael Oxley (R-OH) be stripped of his Chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee. The call for his removal was a result of his directly benefiting from the illegal fund-raising activities of Freddie Mac during a period that legislation to further regulate the Government-sponsored entity was stifled in his Committee.

Whether one doubts that there was any type of admission that things were not up to snuff might be seen in the rest of the article.

Freddie Mac recently paid a record $3.8 million fine to settle a complaint that it illegally used corporate treasury funds to sponsor Congressional fundraisers that raised nearly $3 million dollars. Most of the 85 fund-raising events were hosted by Freddie Mac to benefit Chairman Oxley at a time when legislation was pending before Chairman Oxley’s committee that Freddie Mac opposed.

One source is fine. But becomes more pointed as information from a second reference point is added. CommonDreams has this:

Late last year, Financial Services Committee Chairman Michael G. Oxley (R-Ohio) and his top aides pressured the Investment Company Institute, a consortium of mutual fund companies, to push aside Julie Domenick as its top lobbyist. Oxley’s staff suggested to industry officials that a congressional probe of the mutual fund industry might ease up if ICI complied.

What effect did all this really have on Oxley? Read what this report say:

Shortly after taking over the committee chairmanship in 2001, Oxley said that “a number of concerns have been raised” about Freddie Mac and its larger competitor, Fannie Mae, including “the adequacy of their supervision, the nature of their mission and the risk they could pose to the financial system in the event of a downturn.” (page 36)

Little more than a month later guess who was being a featured guest at Delk’s events. Until the shake up there has been little further said about the ‘number of concerns’.

It appears that no news will be featured at the present on this topic. Since Oxley is on the way out there appears to be no urgency to this issue. In the meantime he spent a little time in Allen County stumping for his office staffer in her bid to overthrow the county chairman. As his last days in office approach perhaps someone will undo the damage by the Sarbanes-Oxley act which has hurt small companies in their attempt to comply.

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Comments

2 Comments so far

  1. Tom Blumer on May 27, 2006 11:32 am

    I think Oxley figured out that he’d better leave because of everything you’ve described, and hoped that his lame-duck status and other scandals would take the spotlight away from him. It appears to have worked.

    The Fannie Mae he worried about got assessed a $400 million fine this week, it board and execs were described in the worst terms, and they STILL don’t have their books in order after a nearly two-year attempt to reconstruct.

    It would have been nice if Oxley had done his job the past 4-5 years. Maybe things would have turned out differently if someone had gotten their arms around Fannie Mae earlier.

  2. Conservative Culture » Oxley - Freddie Mac Revived Briefly on May 31, 2006 10:24 am

    [...] Just received the info on the Toledo Blade . I appears that they either saw the article here or are left wondering the exact same thing. As it has been said… inquiring minds want to know. [...]

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