In light of Mitt Romney's
demand yesterday that Newt Gingrich return the $1.6 million he was paid to advise Freddie Mac,
this is pretty funny:
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has long been critical of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, blaming the government-backed housing lenders for inducing the home-mortgage crisis and saying they have become too unwieldy. [...] Yet Romney has profited from investments that were made in both government entities, according to his personal finance disclosure forms and documents compiled by American Bridge, one of several Democratic groups in Washington formed to back the election campaigns of Obama and other Democrats. [...] On his financial disclosure statement filed last month, Romney reported owning between $250,001 and $500,000 in a mutual fund that invests in debt notes of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, among other government entities. Over the previous year, he had reported earning between $15,001 and $50,000 in interest from those investments.
Unlike most of his investments, these weren't in a blind trust—so Romney can't claim they were out of his control. Moreover, they were made in late 2007, right around the same time that conservatives decided to (incorrectly) blame Freddie and Fannie for the housing crisis.
Neither Gingrich nor Romney come out of this looking good. Despite their present-day condemnations of Freddie Mac, Gingrich was essentially a lobbyist for the agency and Romney invested hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money in it. No wonder Republicans are having such a hard time choosing who they want to nominate.