Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeG
Here is an article from Sept 30, 1999 from the NYT.....I don't think this answers your question entirely but gives some insight into how Fannie Mae got into trouble as a result of the Clinton adminsitration putting pressure on them to increase home loans to minorities with sub-par credit and predicts the trouble in an econmoic downturn.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...pagewanted=all
Some informative quotes:
"Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits. "
" In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans."
" In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's"
"Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings."
"In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups" |
Good article, good find, and it explains why the government had to take over Fannie completely and it may cost the taxpayers some money in the long run.
Yet still, the loans that are fucking up the financial system now, that the government is going to spend $700 billion to buy, are not Fannie or Freddie loans. They are loans that were given by other institutions, that didn't conform to Fannie or Freddie rules.
My point is this, conservatives are trying to exonerate McCain from having anything to do with the current crisis because he "called for" stricter regulation of Fannie and Freddie a couple of years ago.
But Fannie and Freddie aren't the problem.
Conservatives are also trying to blame the problem on the Community Reinvestment Act, which was passed in 1977 and enforced by the Clinton administration....so that lower income people could buy houses.
The problem with that is the loans that are causing the problems now weren't Fannie and Freddie loans, and they weren't made by institutions that are subject to the rules of the Community Reinvestment Act.
They were made by mortgage brokers (a ridiculously unregulated industry) and then sold to Wall Street firms which packaged them into collateralized debt obligations (a creation of Wall Street which was made possible by banking deregulation) and insured by credit default swaps (another creation made possible by deregulation)
So my overall point is this....blaming the current credit crisis on Fannie Mae, or the CRA, or on poor people or the folks in Washington who wanted to help poor people buy homes, doesn't pass the smell test.
The current glut of toxic securities and their impact on our credit markets is a direct result of banking deregulation.