It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today's financial crisis.
Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, five years ago.
Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration "right-wing deology" of "de-regulation" that set the stage for the financial crisis. Do facts matter?
We also hear that it is the free market that is to blame. But the facts show that it was the government that pressured financial institutions in general to lend to subprime borrowers, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and, later, threats of legal action by then Attorney General Janet Reno if the feds did not like the statistics on who was getting loans and who wasn't.
Is that the free market? Or do facts not matter?
Then there is the question of being against the "greed" of CEOs and for "the people." Franklin Raines made $90 million while he was head of Fannie Mae and mismanaging that institution into crisis.
Who in Congress defended Franklin Raines? Liberal Democrats, including Maxine Waters and the Congressional Black Caucus, at least one of whom referred to the "lynching" of Raines, as if it was racist to hold him to the same standard as white CEOs.
Even after he was deposed as head of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines was consulted this year by the Obama campaign for his advice on housing!
The Washington Post criticized the McCain campaign for calling Raines an adviser to Obama, even though that fact was reported in the Washington Post itself on July 16th. The technicality and the spin here is that Raines is not officially listed as an adviser. But someone who advises is an adviser, whether or not his name appears on a letterhead.
The tie between Barack Obama and Franklin Raines is not all one-way. Obama
has been the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae's financial contributions,
right after Senator Christopher Dodd.
Unfortunately, Thomas, facts don't matter, because the liberal media has a template! And the liberal media template is that there is “racial disparity” in loan application approvals. As if ability to pay didn't matter. The liberal media template is that we must have “fairness” of home ownership absent ability to handle it. The liberal media template is that there is inherent “virtue” in poverty and inherent “vice” in prosperity.
Just get everyone who wants one a home and the result will be grateful owners responsibly shouldering their good fortune. Poverty, as liberals see it, is nothing more than an accidental circumstance of birth resulting in the absence of wherewithal. Lack of judgement, ambition or a sense of responsibility has nothing to do with it.
Thus, when people start defaulting loans they never should have received in the first place, no one is more surprised than liberals.
Another interesting factor in the warped liberal media template is that all immigrants would be grateful mortgage payers. As a result, a huge number of these no-documentation-required "liar loans" were made to illegal aliens, who must have thought the gringo was crazy to give them a house with only a promise, made in Spanish, to repay the loan. No Social Security Number, no credit history...hey, this is easy. Now that these illegal Mexicans don't have jobs in the construction business anymore, they have stopped paying their mortgage along with their new truck payments and the credit cards that banks like Washington Mutual sent them. They don't worry about their credit being ruined. No Social Security Number to trace their movements, so why should they worry about loan defaults. They've haven't any stake in the future of this country, so when everything dries up they'll just drive back home to Mexico in their truck they didn't pay for, with the goodies they bought with plastic they didn't pay for, and lay low and wait until the next time America is offering goodies.
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