Little-Acorn
Well-Known Member
I wrote this last November, a week after the election, after seeing the videos on Youtube. The history it describes, is just as true now as it was then, and just as true as when it happened over the span of the last 30 years or so.
Once we get through the obligatory "Fox News always lies" hysteria from the usual suspects, these events of the past are very much worth discussing.
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Have you seen the Special Report composed by Fox News, on the financial crisis? It's a hour-long show, and been broadcast several times. Someone has put it on YouTube, in six segments. Fox calls it "Saving Our Economy". Go to YouTube and do a search on that title, and you should get all six segments. They vary from 5 to 10 minutes each, about 45 minutes running time total (no commercials).
It's a GREAT explanation of how the crisis started, who did what, what the results were, etc. A real must-see.
Here's a summary:
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Sept. 23, 2008: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson: "The events leading us here began many years ago, starting with bad lending practices by banks and financial institutions, and by borrowers taking up mortgages they couldn't afford."
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The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA, or "Fannie Mae") was created in 1938 during the Great Depression. to create a market for mortgages where they could be bought and sold.
In 1968, Lyndon Johnson and a Democratic Congress spun off Fannie Mae so that it would not show up in the Federal budget. But the Federal govt was always there, ready to bail out Fannie Mae if problems happened. This enables Fannie Mae to offer lower rates for the mortgages it bought, since it was not taking the risks that other banks and institutions had to. In 1970, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation ("Freddie Mac") was formed, to create competition for Fannie Mae, since ordinary banks could NOT compete with the government-backed rates they offered.
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was passed by a Democrat Congress and signed by Jimmy Carter in 1977. It made sure banks were lending to people of all colors and income levels. But things quickly began going off the rails, as activist groups found a new weapon in the law: The could start suing lenders for discrimination if they didn't lend to enough minority families, regardless of the families' ability to pay the loans back as promised. Banks began making riskier and riskier loans for fear of having to fight expensive lawsuits.
Community groups began bullying the banks, especially one called the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now ("ACORN"). It hired several specialized lawyers, including a young man named Barack Obama, to teach its employees how to go to the homes of bank CEOs and senior officers, harassing and publicly embarrassing them while remaining within the limits of local law to avoid prosecution. At one point, ACORN brought a lawsuit against a thrift merger in Illinois, insisting that the lending institutions had not made as many loans to minorities as ACORN thought they should. The bank replied that such loans would be financially irresponsible, and would put ALL the bank's customers at unacceptable risk. ACORN prevailed in court, and banks began making more and more risky loans to home buyers who could have never qualified for those loans under ordinary circumstances.
In late 2000, in the last days of the Clinton administration, the government ordered Fannie and Freddie to increase the numbers of these risky ("sub-prime") mortgages they were buying from banks and lending institutions across the country. They did, lowering their rates and buying more and more, until fully half their portfolios consisted of these risky sub-prime mortgages, combined and packaged in various ways.
The Bush administration raised red flags starting in April 2001. Their 2002 Budget Request declared that the size of mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is "a potential problem" because financial trouble in either one of them "could cause strong repercussions in financial markets".
In 2003, the White House warning about Fannie and Freddie, was upgraded to a "Systemic Risk that could spread beyond just the housing sector".
As Fannie and Freddie continued to lower their rates and buy mortgages, lenders made more and more mortgages to buyers with questionable ability to pay, safe in the knowledge that they could immediately turn around and sell the mortgages to the government-sponsored Fannie and Freddie, thus avoiding any consequences if the loans were later defaulted. They were happy to make more and more such mortgages, collecting fees for each and selling the mortgages to F&F.
Once we get through the obligatory "Fox News always lies" hysteria from the usual suspects, these events of the past are very much worth discussing.
----------------------------------------
Have you seen the Special Report composed by Fox News, on the financial crisis? It's a hour-long show, and been broadcast several times. Someone has put it on YouTube, in six segments. Fox calls it "Saving Our Economy". Go to YouTube and do a search on that title, and you should get all six segments. They vary from 5 to 10 minutes each, about 45 minutes running time total (no commercials).
It's a GREAT explanation of how the crisis started, who did what, what the results were, etc. A real must-see.
Here's a summary:
-----------------------------------------
Sept. 23, 2008: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson: "The events leading us here began many years ago, starting with bad lending practices by banks and financial institutions, and by borrowers taking up mortgages they couldn't afford."
-----------------------------------------
The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA, or "Fannie Mae") was created in 1938 during the Great Depression. to create a market for mortgages where they could be bought and sold.
In 1968, Lyndon Johnson and a Democratic Congress spun off Fannie Mae so that it would not show up in the Federal budget. But the Federal govt was always there, ready to bail out Fannie Mae if problems happened. This enables Fannie Mae to offer lower rates for the mortgages it bought, since it was not taking the risks that other banks and institutions had to. In 1970, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation ("Freddie Mac") was formed, to create competition for Fannie Mae, since ordinary banks could NOT compete with the government-backed rates they offered.
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was passed by a Democrat Congress and signed by Jimmy Carter in 1977. It made sure banks were lending to people of all colors and income levels. But things quickly began going off the rails, as activist groups found a new weapon in the law: The could start suing lenders for discrimination if they didn't lend to enough minority families, regardless of the families' ability to pay the loans back as promised. Banks began making riskier and riskier loans for fear of having to fight expensive lawsuits.
Community groups began bullying the banks, especially one called the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now ("ACORN"). It hired several specialized lawyers, including a young man named Barack Obama, to teach its employees how to go to the homes of bank CEOs and senior officers, harassing and publicly embarrassing them while remaining within the limits of local law to avoid prosecution. At one point, ACORN brought a lawsuit against a thrift merger in Illinois, insisting that the lending institutions had not made as many loans to minorities as ACORN thought they should. The bank replied that such loans would be financially irresponsible, and would put ALL the bank's customers at unacceptable risk. ACORN prevailed in court, and banks began making more and more risky loans to home buyers who could have never qualified for those loans under ordinary circumstances.
In late 2000, in the last days of the Clinton administration, the government ordered Fannie and Freddie to increase the numbers of these risky ("sub-prime") mortgages they were buying from banks and lending institutions across the country. They did, lowering their rates and buying more and more, until fully half their portfolios consisted of these risky sub-prime mortgages, combined and packaged in various ways.
The Bush administration raised red flags starting in April 2001. Their 2002 Budget Request declared that the size of mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is "a potential problem" because financial trouble in either one of them "could cause strong repercussions in financial markets".
In 2003, the White House warning about Fannie and Freddie, was upgraded to a "Systemic Risk that could spread beyond just the housing sector".
As Fannie and Freddie continued to lower their rates and buy mortgages, lenders made more and more mortgages to buyers with questionable ability to pay, safe in the knowledge that they could immediately turn around and sell the mortgages to the government-sponsored Fannie and Freddie, thus avoiding any consequences if the loans were later defaulted. They were happy to make more and more such mortgages, collecting fees for each and selling the mortgages to F&F.