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WASHINGTON – The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.
AP IMPACT: US diluted loan rules before crash - Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081201/ap_on_bi_ge/meltdown_ignored_warnings - broken link)
WASHINGTON – The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.
AP IMPACT: US diluted loan rules before crash - Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081201/ap_on_bi_ge/meltdown_ignored_warnings - broken link)
If memory serves me correctly, the clinto administration is the one that laxxed the rules for lending money to those that could not afford to buy a home. So before blaming the bush reign for the mortgage debacle, take a look at the clintons.
The media seems to ignore that Clinton and democrats STARTED this mess... Bush CONTINUED it and the democrats also prevented its correction in the past... instead of looking at the root of the problem, the media seems to like half-truths and outright deceit...
Wait! It was all Bill Clinton's fault! No, it was FDR's fault! No, blame ACORN! ACORN, poor people and oh yeah the DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS!
I look forward to those weak regulators explaining their inaction away, too. "By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way....The government's banking agencies spent nearly a year debating the rules, which required unanimous agreement among the OCC, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Federal Reserve, and the Office of Thrift Supervision — agencies that sometimes don't agree."
The administration's blind eye to the impending crisis is emblematic of its governing philosophy, which trusted market forces and discounted the value of government intervention in the economy.
Many of the banks that fought to undermine the proposals by some regulators are now either out of business or accepting billions in federal aid to recover from a mortgage crisis they insisted would never come. Many executives remain in high-paying jobs, even after their assurances were proved false.
***
B]anks said they shouldn't have to double-check the brokers. "It is not our role to be the regulator for the third-party lenders," wrote Ruthann Melbourne, chief risk officer of IndyMac Bank.
"which trusted market forces and discounted the value of government intervention in the economy" - such a gentle way to say "which held the gates open for hog-wild greed."
I look forward to the entire country recognizing and acknowledging the facts now. See, right wingers? Remember how they told you this was the fault of poor people, ACORN and the 2006 Congress? In fact, I'll bet the attacks against ACORN during the campaign about the part-time teenage workers subverting the very fabric of democracy, I'll bet calling attention to ACORN was a diversionary strategy, to get the trusty old base to connect the mortgage crisis > poor people's bad loans > ACORN lobbied for housing loans for poor people > only liberals care about poor people + Obama worked with ACORN = the housing crisis was the fault of liberals as represented by Obama, poor people and ACORN. Oh and Bill Clinton in there somewhere at the beginning. Not Phil Gramm; Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton!
They do everything they can to divert your attention, keep us divided, blaming each other. Stop falling for it!
If memory serves me correctly, the clinto administration is the one that laxxed the rules for lending money to those that could not afford to buy a home. So before blaming the bush reign for the mortgage debacle, take a look at the clintons.
The act that Clinton signed was a BANKING regulation.
Most of the bad paper out there came from lending institutions other than banks.
The meltdown is the Baby Bush and his Gang of Merry Thug Republicans wanting to rape the Country.
If memory serves me correctly, the clinto administration is the one that laxxed the rules for lending money to those that could not afford to buy a home. So before blaming the bush reign for the mortgage debacle, take a look at the clintons.
This is true. It was part of the Clinton economic plan for the 21st Century. Goes right along with the CRA (Community Reinvestment Act), also a Clinton plan.
None of you had ever heard of CRA (which was actually passed in 1977) until September of 2007 at the earliest. That's when freerepublic.com started circulating Thomas DiLorenzo's confabulated attempts to shift blame for the credit crunch off of Republicans and onto Democrats...onto Bill Clinton if at all possible.
DiLorenzo's analysis is a fraud. It ignores the fact that CRA loans issued by CRA banks and S&L's have performed better than industry averages. It ignores the fact that CRA lending all but dried up in 2001 because the Bush administration refused to enforce the law. It ignores the fact that the paper that ultimately failed came in large waves out of the unregulated markets made by independent brokers and profit-seeking investment banks.
The situation we now find oursleves in arose in its entirety from an unwillingness on the part of laissez-faire regulators to regulate the very free-market excesses that they are charged with protecting us from, even when they were explicitly warned that a scenario very much like the one that has come to pass was looming on a not at all distant horizon.
This has been a failure of laissez-faire free-market capitalism foolishly left to its own devices, and of nothing more or less than that.
Face it - these guys in government know WAY ahead of time what's going to happen, but don't do anything about it, since their buddies are making money. Short-sighted, and deal with the consequences later, because WE, the taxpayers, will be the ones to clean up the mess. So, they don't CARE if everything is going to blow up eventually.
When I hear about these god-awful bankers who TOLD people that they'd be able to handle their mortgages - "oh, yes, you can refinance in two years, when your rate goes up on this ARM", when they KNEW that it wasn't true, that these people were going to go into foreclosure, and wouldn't be able to get a fixed loan. Bastards.
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But-but-but -!!!!
