Who was in charge when Fannie and Freddie were told by Congress to hold more subprime loans in 2004?

[flpoljunkie]

George W. Bush and the Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. The irony, and the misinformation here, is that Fannie and Freddie actually bought fewer of these subprime mortgages between 2004 and 2006 because of their tougher standards. The infamous Angelo Mozilo, CEO of Countrywide, is said to have threatened one of these agencies with taking away Countrywide's prime loans if they did not buy more of his subprime mortgages.

Yet today we have Republicans still trying to blame Fannie and Freddie for the subprime loan debacle and want reform of Fannie and Freddie included in Dodd's financial reform bill. The Republicans are fully aware, of course, that Democrats will be dealing with reform of Fannie and Freddie in separate legislation.

There's also this about Fannie and Freddie and the subprime loan crisis from mcclatchy...

Between 2004 and 2006, when subprime lending was exploding, Fannie and Freddie went from holding a high of 48 percent of the subprime loans that were sold into the secondary market to holding about 24 percent, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance, a specialty publication. One reason is that Fannie and Freddie were subject to tougher standards than many of the unregulated players in the private sector who weakened lending standards, most of whom have gone bankrupt or are now in deep trouble.

During those same explosive three years, private investment banks — not Fannie and Freddie — dominated the mortgage loans that were packaged and sold into the secondary mortgage market. In 2005 and 2006, the private sector securitized almost two thirds of all U.S. mortgages, supplanting Fannie and Freddie, according to a number of specialty publications that track this
data.

Federal Reserve Board data show that:

*More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.
*Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.
*Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics.



http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/10/12/53802/private-sector-loans-not-fannie.html

[rfranklin]

1. They were doing it in memory of Bill Clinton...

and under threat of the "Clenis."

[Kdillard]

2. Thanks for this information. I have seen many rw sites trying to rewrite history

On this.

[rfranklin]

3. On a more serious note: This destroys the Freeper position...

But they will slither away and start blabbing some other nonsense.

[county worker]

5. Today on the Washington Times radio news show I heard words that went like this,

"The economic problems were not caused by bad mortgages or Freddy and Fanny they were caused by this congress." That was in a response to their story about Congress voting on the financial reforms bill today.

[BrklynLiberal]

4. uh...let me see....hmmm....well....oh my.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

HOLY SHIT! IT WAS DONE WHILE PRES SHIT-FOR-BRAINS WAS IN OFFICE...not a Democrat!!!

[karynnj]

6. The strange thing is that the Democrats seemed to let the Republicans

get away with the claim that they wanted to regulate Freddie and Fannie and the Democrats didn't.

The facts are the House passed a bipartisan bill, sponsored by Republican Baker, supported by Oxley and Barney Frank. It then went to the Senate and was referred to the Banking Committee and the Democrats accepted it. Bush did not like it. The Republicans voted it down, but passed a bill written by Hagel, Sununu and Dole (McCain co-sponsored it a year after the last action). It passed the committee, but they never sent it to the floor. There were 55 Republicans then, but too many did not support it after being lobbied. The Democrats opposed it because of a Santorum amendment that would have hurt affordable housing.

The big difference, other than the Santorum amendment was that the Hagel bill would have limited the size of the FMs lower than what it then was. This, of course, would have moved more mortgages to the less regulated, riskier private sector. So, the Bipartisan House bill that the Senate Democrats were ok with would have done more regulation.