News release: “For many years the President and his Administration have not only warned of the systemic consequences of financial turmoil at a housing government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) but also put forward thoughtful plans to reduce the risk that either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac would encounter such difficulties. President Bush publicly called for GSE reform 17 times in 2008 alone before Congress acted. Unfortunately, these warnings went unheeded, as the President’s repeated attempts to reform the supervision of these entities were thwarted by the legislative maneuvering of those who emphatically denied there were problems.”

• See also Press Briefing by Dana Perino, and Keith Hennessey, Director of the National Economic Council, September 19, 2008: “You’ve got policies that are being implemented by Treasury, the Fed and SEC. So you’ve got Treasury, which is implementing this new program of insurance for money market mutual funds; you have the Fed, which is providing significant amounts of more liquidity to those money market mutual funds, and that’s related to commercial paper — that’s a new change over the past 24 hours, announced at 8:30 a.m. this morning — and then you have the SEC announcing some actions having to do with short selling of stocks.”
• Related postings on financial system