Irony
Posted on September 26, 2008
According to Wikipedia: “Irony is a literary or rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity or discordance between what one says or does, and what one means or what is generally understood. In modern usage, it can refer to incongruity between the intended meaning of an action and the actual or perceived meaning of an action.”
For example, Senator Chris Dodd blaming the Bush Administration for the problems with financial markets.
The good Senator, who was so successful in his run for President that he received exactly no delegates, was the number one recipient of campaign dollars from both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Not surprisingly, he was also the number one proponent of doing nothing to reform Fannie and Freddie through the last decade. The Bush Administration, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, and key conservative Republicans long warned that Fannie and Freddie needed to be reformed, that they were having a unhealthy impact on the housing market-place.
But Fannie and Freddie didn’t want to be reformed. Their executives were making far too much money, basically shooting fish in the barrel, to want to screw it up with any kinds of reforms.
And Chris Dodd, the number one recipient of money from Fannie and Freddie, and Barack Obama, the number three recipient of money from Fannie and Freddie, were loyal soldiers and steadfastly agreed to stop reform in its tracks.
Well, you all know the rest of the story. Because of the market distortions created by Fannie and Freddie, we now have a crippled economy. And the number one recipient of Fannie and Freddie campaign contributions is the guy supposedly leading the charge to “bail out Wall Street.”
Conservative House Republicans, who have long championed reform of Fannie and Freddie, must look at Chris Dodd, the number one recipient of money from Fannie and Freddie, and wonder about the cruel ironies of the wacky world of Washington.
Those conservative Republicans were right all along about the market distortions caused by Fannie and Freddie, while Chris Dodd was completely wrong (egged on, undoubtedly, by the generous campaign contributions of the Fannie and Freddie executives). Yet those conservative Republicans are now being blamed for holding up the reform package.
Irony, indeed.