{"id":192,"date":"2008-08-15T14:07:47","date_gmt":"2008-08-15T19:07:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/15\/fannie-mae-freddie-mac-erik-prince-theres-a-connection\/"},"modified":"2008-08-15T14:07:47","modified_gmt":"2008-08-15T19:07:47","slug":"fannie-mae-freddie-mac-erik-prince-theres-a-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=192","title":{"rendered":"Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Erik Prince &#8230;There&#8217;s a Connection?&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"GRBJ0667.gif\" alt=\"GRBJ0667.gif\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/images\/grbj\/GRBJ0667.gif\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">Originally published in the <em>Grand Rapids Business Journal<\/em>, August 4, 2008<\/p>\n<p>Okay, I will admit this is slightly strained, making a connection between Blackwater (a military consulting group) and FannieMae\/FreddieMac (the psuedo-governmental mortgage banking whatever-they-ares). But it is true that both are benefiting by having the federal government throw bags of cash their way. And I&#8217;m not blaming them. Who refuses bags of cash? The other connection is the timeliness: Fan and Fred recently got bailed out and <a title=\"Erik Prince\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Erik_Prince\" target=\"_blank\">Erik Prince<\/a>, founder\/owner of Blackwater, is on a PR spin to manage Blackwater&#8217;s public perception &#8212; they are now a\u00a0friendlier and more shiny with 50% less shooting people in the face.\u00a0Prince is also a born and raised West Michigan guy, so the comic has that goin&#8217; for it, which is nice.<\/p>\n<p>Tune in next week when I tie together the Russian invasion of South Ossetia to rising Great Lake water levels. Weee!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, August 4, 2008 Okay, I will admit this is slightly strained, making a connection between Blackwater (a military consulting group) and FannieMae\/FreddieMac (the psuedo-governmental mortgage banking whatever-they-ares). But it is true that both are benefiting by having the federal government throw bags of cash their way. And [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-rapids-business-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}