Palin Doesn't Know Jack About the Economy, McCain Said He Would Choose a 'Smart' VP

Published by on September 9, 2008

For all of you out there that are overwhelmed by Governor Palin’s tremendous speaking abilities, you should probably look at how well she knows the issues.

Governor Palin has been notorious for her claims of being, “just a hockey mom,” but frankly, do we really want billy’s mom to be a jelly donut away from the most important job in the world?

Fannie and Freddie are Government Entities? Yes or No?

With the bailout from Fannie and Freddie recently, we have the eloquent Governor Palin speaking to the issue at a recent rally in Colorado:

[Sarah Palin told Colorado voters]… that Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) have “gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers.”

Yay, oil! Drill more! ..were the expected responses from everyone in the crowd as well as McCain.

Unfortunately, this statement is just plain wrong and reflects this hockey mom’s naivety when it comes to our financial system. Fannie and Freddie are in fact NOT government entities, but are in fact private companies. (Do you hear Palin saying Exxon/Mobil is too expensive to taxpayers? She should) Here is Wikipedia’s definition for FNM and FRE:

Fannie Mae was founded as a government agency in 1938 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal to provide liquidity to the mortgage market. For the next 30 years, Fannie Mae held a virtual monopoly on the secondary mortgage market in the United States.

In 1968, to remove the activity of Fannie Mae from the annual balance sheet of the federal budget, it was converted into a private corporation.[5] Fannie Mae ceased to be the guarantor of government-issued mortgages, and that responsibility was transferred to the new Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae).

It’s Okay, John McCain is Smart…

So John McCain, the presidential candidate definitely knows how all this fuzzy math stuff works, right? He’s already admitted he doesn’t know how to use a computer, so Wikipedia can’t help.

Last year, McCain told The Boston Globe last year that “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should,” and, here’s the real kicker, said that he would look for someone who was a true economics expert in his VP pick.

So what do we have here? A bunch of dimwits trying to run the country… At least with Cheney, nobody thought he wasn’t highly intelligent, just a bit evil. I think it’s a mixed bag here, do we take evil genius or old and slow or pretty and dumb?

Thanks BloggingStocks for highlighting this issue