NYT: Jacksonville Debate Fact Check ('Fannie, Freddie Created Housing Bubble' lie)

[flpoljunkie]

Emphasis mine.

January 26, 2012, 10:41 PM

Jacksonville Debate Fact Check
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Times reporters take a closer look at some of the statements made by the Republican presidential candidates in Thursday night’s debate.

Fannie and Freddie Created the Housing Bubble


Jason Henry for The New York Times
Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney speaking during a commercial break.

Earlier in the debate, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance companies now under government conservatorship, came under attack for helping to cause the housing crisis, which is nearly five years old. But that significantly exaggerates their role in the crisis, in the view of numerous nonpartisan analysts. By attacking the companies, rivals of Mr. Gingrich by extension attack him, since his company earned more than $1 million as a consultant for Freddie Mac from 1999 to 2006. So it was that Mr. Romney prominently criticized them, saying, “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were a big part of why we have the housing crisis,” then adding that Mr. Gingrich “should have been anxiously telling people that these entities were causing a housing bubble that would cause a collapse that we’ve seen here in Florida and around the country.”

Those, especially Republicans, who put much blame on the mortgage finance companies and the federal government say that because of federal mandates that Fannie and Freddie encourage affordable mortgage loans, the companies enabled mortgages to be granted to people who could not afford them and then invested heavily in securities that packaged these subprime loans, many of which went bust. But numerous analysts and reports have shown that Fannie and Freddie belatedly invested in subprime mortgages in 2005 and 2006 because Wall Street firms were way ahead of them and seizing market share.Many of these analysts are hardly fans of the companies but criticize them for other reasons. When it comes to the financial crisis that began in 2007, Fannie and Freddie were more victim than villain, they say.

The Times’s Joe Nocera has written several columns on the subject, including this one: “An Inconvenient Truth.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/opinion/nocera-an-inconvenient-truth.html

– Jackie Calmes

See link below for other debate fact checks.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/jacksonville-fla-debate-fact-check/?ref=politics

[Nuclear Unicorn]

1. So the NYT is defending Newt from the moderate

We live in interesting times.

If you need me I'll be in the root cellar awaiting the Four Horsemen.