Obama's message to voters: Things could be worse

It was a political hot potato. Nobody wanted to be fighting Frank and Dodd claiming low income borrowers shouldnt buy a house. It would have been political suicide. The repubs tried to tighten up the standards on Fannie/Freddie in the early 2000's after Clinton relaxed the guidelines in 1999 but Frank was very vocal in opposition. He claimed everything was fine and saw no financial problems. He said they were just trying to deny affordable housing and the Bush administration was exaggerating the problems. How much more wrong could Frank have been?

 

Bull. Why do the repubs give Bush, Frist, and DeLay a pass, since they were the majority leaders in the house, senate and white house, and they all supported expanding the role of fannie and freddie and making loans to those who did not qualify for them. I have posted Bush's speech to HUD in 2002 where that is exactly what he said, he introduced his buddy Franklin Raines and said he was committing $440 Billion to the housing market (just from fannie, with more to come from freddie).

I have posted about the secret lobbying program run by the republican appointed political liason at fannie, through DCI, a republican lobbying group (whose CEO organized the repubican national convention), and they turned 9 republican senators to not support fannie and freddie (f&f) reform. Chuck Hagel, the lead repub pushing the reform bill blamed the republican lobbying effort for defeating his bill.

At the same time, Chris Cox at SEC changed the net capital rule and allowed the biggest banks in the nation to triple their leverage from 15:1 to 45:1, which directly led to their failure as Lehman, Merrill Lynch, and Bear Stearns all failed within 4 years (bankrupt or sold at pennies on the dollar).

Freddie Mac Tried to Kill Republican Regulatory Bill in 2005 - Politics | Republican Party | Democratic Party | Political Spectrum - FOXNews.com

I don't think my source here is possibly a liberal source, fox news.

Yes, Dodd and Frank opposed regulation of f&f, and they were clearly wrong. I don't see anyone give them a pass.

I see the right give Bush, DeLay, and Frist a big pass. They ran the country, they had the majority in all branches of fed. govt., house, senate and WH.

At the end of the day, the repubs killed reform of f&f, secretly. Note, on Hagels letter, 25 repub senators signed it and 29 repub senators did NOT sign it, the repubs didn't even have a majority of their own party in support of regulating f&f.

Heck, at least the dems were open about it, the repubs were two faced about it, in open supporting reform and in private the majority of repubs were against reform of f&f.

Make no mistake, reform of f&f was killed by the majority party in the senate in 2005, the republicans who never even called for the vote because they knew they couldn't get even a majority of their own party to support it.

Now, the reason why the repubs killed reform of f&f? Well, boosting housing was their "jobs plan". They needed to boost the economy following the 2001 recession (mild recession), and industry was busy sending our manufacturing to China and customer support and IT jobs to India, and we needed a domestic source of employment, so they jugged the housing market with very low interest rates and above trend money supply growth, plus easy lending rules backed by f&f. After all, they had to look like they could govern, like they knew what they were doing. I guess they figured maybe they could keep the deal going to the next election and blame the aftermath on the dems, but it blew up in 2007 and 2008 on Bush's watch, and the public appropriately blamed the repubs for screwing up the economy.

But basically the repubs failed to reform f&f despite being in the majority, for political reasons. They didn't want to pop the bubble in housing, which was destined to pop at some time anyway.

Another interesting question, is if the dems were so powerful and could block this legislation by themselves, WHY did Fannie and Mr Hollis McLoughlin spend $2 million to lobby the repubs to defeat Hagel's bill? (Answer: with 59 repub senators, they only had to buy one dem vote on this and they could have defeated a filibuster. Anybody think there was not one dem vote for sale in the senate? Of course there was, so Fannie had to ensure the repubs did not support reform).

 

This goes back to Clinton. When a person can get a home loan with nothing down and most times the Government will pay most if not all the closing. How hard is it for them to walk away from a house?

How hard is it for them to walk away when they can't make the notes?

To try and remove these things, the word racist would come into play. Not helping the poor.

Taxing the people making over $250K. Spread the wealth. Too many things come into play here.

 

This one is just too easy...

Obama says he deserves a grade of 'incomplete' - Yahoo! News




Maybe f&f will help someone buy this place, after 378 years.......

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100801...jA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNhZnRlcjM3OHllYXI-

 

Obama is very good at taking credit for things that are unverifiable.

 

Like all the new jobs, jobs saved, etc.?

 

Nobody is giving Frist and Delay a pass either but the fact remains that Frank was the ring leader who was ready to make it a political bomb by saying the repubs where trying to deny low income borrowers the chance to get loans. And, you need to read Bush's speech again, he clearly said "QUALIFIED" buyers.

Again, we already hashed this out over a year ago. The habit of irresponsible permissive lending goes all the way back to the early 90's. There is a clear line that can be drawn from that period where government got involved in telling the banks who and where they should lend money, through relaxing credit standards, to banking/investment bank deregulation right on to the sub prime mess.A proverbial house of cards built from the politically correct notion that everyone should own a home regardless of income or credit.

 

Here is Pres. GWB, June 2002, getting the program up and running, and he included low income purchasers:

President Calls for Expanding Opportunities to Home Ownership

So president Bush was lining up Freddie Mac to buy mortgages from "consumers with POOR CREDIT", and I do not consider those to be "qualified buyers". It was the republicans who vastly expanded the availability of funds through f&f, including "consumers with poor credit". This was not Clinton, nor Barney Frank, it was George W. Bush.

 

Individuals who have experienced severe financial problems are usually labeled as higher risk and therefore have greater difficulty obtaining credit, especially for large purchases such as automobiles or real estate. These individuals may have had job loss, previous debt or marital problems, or unexpected medical issues, usually unforeseen and causing major financial setbacks. As a result, late payments, charge-offs, repossessions and even bankruptcy or foreclosures may result.

Due to these previous credit problems, these individuals may also be precluded from obtaining any type of conventional loan. To meet this demand, lenders have seen that a tiered pricing arrangement, one which allows these individuals to receive loans but pay a higher interest rate and higher fees, may allow loans which otherwise would not occur. In 1999, under pressure from the Clinton administration, Fannie Mae, the nation's largest home mortgage underwriter, relaxed credit requirements on the loans it would purchase from other banks and lenders, hoping that easing these restrictions would result in increased loan availability for minority and low-income buyers. Putting pressure on the GSE's (Government Sponsored Enterprise) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Clinton administration looked to increase their sub-prime portfolios, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development expressing its interest in the GSE's maintaining a 50% portion of their portfolios in loans to low and moderate-income borrowers.

Subprime lending - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

And keeping the economy from getting worse.