Bluebonnets-Thistle wrote:
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Fannie and Freddie did this by becoming a key enabler of the mortgage crisis. They fueled Wall Street's efforts to securitize subprime loans by becoming the primary customer of all AAA-rated subprime-mortgage pools. In addition, they held an enormous portfolio of mortgages themselves.
Fannie/Freddie was a democrat program all together. Not Bush's. Bush tried to get it under control 7 times, all blocked by Dodd/Frank.
In the times that Fannie and Freddie couldn't make the market, they became the market. Over the years, it added up to an enormous obligation. As of June 2007, Fannie alone owned or guaranteed more than $388 billion in high-risk mortgage investments. Their large presence created an environment within which even mortgage-backed securities assembled by others could find a ready home.
Typical left fleabaggers, cause a major crises, blame others. DUH
December 21, 2008
WASHINGTON — "We can put light where there's darkness, and hope where there's despondency in this country. And part of it is working together as a nation to encourage folks to own their own home."
- President George W. Bush, Oct. 15, 2002
John Snow, say the housing push went too far.
"The Bush administration took a lot of pride that home ownership had reached historic highs," Snow said during an interview. "But what we forgot in the process was that it has to be done in the context of people being able to afford their house. We now realize there was a high cost."
Darrin West could not believe it. The president of the United States was standing in his living room. It was June 17, 2002, a day West recalls as "the highlight of my life." Bush, in Atlanta to introduce a plan to increase the number of minority homeowners by 5.5 million, was touring Park Place South, a development of starter homes in a neighborhood once marked by blight and crime.
West had patrolled there as a police officer, and now he was the proud owner of a $130,000 town house, bought with an adjustable-rate mortgage and a $20,000 government loan as his down payment - just the sort of creative public-private financing Bush was promoting.
"Part of economic security," Bush declared that day, "is owning your own home."
But for much of Bush's tenure, government statistics show, incomes for most families remained relatively stagnant while housing prices skyrocketed. That put home ownership increasingly out of reach for first-time buyers like West.
So Bush had to, in his words, "use the mighty muscle of the federal government" to meet his goal. He proposed affordable housing tax incentives. He insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac meet ambitious new goals for low-income lending.
Concerned that down payments were a barrier, Bush persuaded Congress to spend as much as $200 million a year to help first-time buyers with down payments and closing costs.
And he pushed to allow first-time buyers to qualify for government insured mortgages with no money down.
The president also leaned on mortgage brokers and lenders to devise their own innovations. "Corporate America," he said, "has a responsibility to work to make America a compassionate place."
The president's first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission promised a "kinder, gentler" agency. The second was pushed out amid industry complaints that he was too aggressive. Under its current leader, the agency failed to police the catastrophic decisions that toppled the investment bank Bear Stearns and contributed to the current crisis, according to a recent inspector general's report.
As for Bush's banking regulators, they once brandished a chain saw over a 9,000-page pile of regulations as they promised to ease burdens on the industry. When states tried to use consumer protection laws to crack down on predatory lending, the comptroller of the currency blocked the effort, asserting that states had no authority over national banks.
Poor teabagger.
Aries
