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I've heard this whopper several times now, most recently during the Dem convention this last week. What's most surprising (Democrat lies in general aren't surprising) is that they seem to be building their entire agenda around this particular fib - "The best reason to vote for us, is so that we don't go back to the Republican policies that DIDN'T WORK in the past!"
But in fact, the unworkable policies that led to the present finacial crisis, were born and bred in Democrat-dominated committees, planning sessions, courts, and community-organizing groups.
Excellent, and so true. Here is a great article that was posted today on American Thinker by Jim Yardley, a ritired financial controller. He lays this out very well and explains clearly how the CRA and Democrat mortgage policies created the mortgage crisis:
And they get away with it. The media never corrects them on it. You would think, after as big a crisis as we had, there would be FACTUAL news specials and reports on what went wrong and why. You dont see that and we all know why. It is easier to just say, "its their fault" and be done with it. Unfortunately some people believe everything the media tells them and they think its all one groups fault.
Anyone that knows anything knows that it was no where near a one sided problem. It easily went back to a thing or two that Clinton did. Along with several other things.
IF it were really all the GOP/Bushs fault, we would hear more detail about what happened and we wouldve had news specials/reports on it detailing it all.
If you'd like to read a solid book on who really caused the housing crash, 'The Housing Boom And Bust' by Thomas Sowell will set the record straight.
Barney Frank's own words ('I want to ROLL THE DICE as it applies to this subsidized housing situation') pretty much slit his own throat & placed the lame right where it belong; on himself, Chris Dodd, Schumer and several other Democrats including Obama who had a chance to stop this burgeoning collapse-in-the-making in 2003, and refused to act in the name of 'fairness'.
NY's current governor also deserves some blame as well; he certainly did his part as Clinton's HUD Secretary
So Bush promotes more lending and refinancing through Fannie and Freddie instead? Bush doubled down on these risky practices!
So you think Fannie and Freddie involved risky practices and thus think they should be disbanded, or do you think they should have been reformed a decade ago when Bush suggested it?
"The costs of the War on Terror are often contested, as academics and critics of the component wars (including the Iraq War) have unearthed many hidden costs not represented in official estimates. The most recent major report on these costs come from Brown University in the form of the Costs of War project,[1] which said the total for wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan is at least $3.2-4 trillion.[2] The report disavowed previous estimates of the Iraq War's cost as being under $1 trillion, saying the Department of Defense's direct spending on Iraq totaled at least $757.8 billion, but also highlighting the complementary costs at home, such as interest paid on the funds borrowed to finance the wars and a potential nearly $1 trillion in extra spending to care for veterans returning from combat through 2050.[3]
Those figures are significantly more than typical estimates published just prior to the start of the Iraq War, many of which were based on a shorter term of involvement. For example, in a March 16, 2003 Meet the Press interview of Vice President Dick Cheney, held less than a week before the Iraq War began, host Tim Russert reported that "every analysis said this war itself would cost about $80 billion, recovery of Baghdad, perhaps of Iraq, about $10 billion per year. We should expect as American citizens that this would cost at least $100 billion for a two-year involvement.".[4]"
I leave it to those smarter then me to subtract those figures from the National Debt and find out what percentage of it is directly related to which parties.
Back to the subject:
The next time you hear the usual Democrat extremists on TV insisting that "We don't want to go back to the Republican policies that got us here", remember that THEY don't have anything except similar smears and namecalling, but distressingly few facts.
Because, in fact, it was DEMOCRAT policies that cause the present financial crisis. Policies that began a generation ago, and kept building and building more risky debt like a ticking time bomb that finally exploded in 2008, as documented in the OP here and its links.
If there's anything we don't want to go back to this coming election, it's those Democrat policies that caused the recession that we still haven't recovered from.
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.
By the beginning of 2008, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had bought up over $4 trillion in mortgages, roughly one-quarter of which was risky sub-prime mortgage paper. With interest rates rising, these rickety homeowners started defaulting on their loans. Only about 2% of them defaulted by January 2008, but the effect was disastrous.
And all the Republicans' attempts to regulate or slow down the huge pace of lending and buying up these risky loans, were either defeated by Democrat majorities or filibustered by Dem minorities.
The idea that the current financial crisis, caused by these strident Democrat polices, was "the result of Republican policies" is ludicrous.
As a recent ex-President said, it takes some brass to attack the other guy for what you did yourself.
Excellent, and so true. Here is a great article that was posted today on American Thinker by Jim Yardley, a ritired financial controller. He lays this out very well and explains clearly how the CRA and Democrat mortgage policies created the mortgage crisis:
The only reason the Clinton era saw a surplus were because of his predecessors policies (Bush Sr and Reagan).
Those, and two policies put into effect during Clinton's ow presidency:
1.) Devolving Welfare from the Fed to the states, so they had to compete with each other for the most efficient way to help the unemployed (and they put in place a requirement that the unemployed actually look for work and eventually find it), and
2.) Lowering the Capital Gains tax rates. this cause so much economic activity, that Capital Gains tax revenue to the government, actually INCREASED by a huge amount. This increased revenue was the single biggest reason the budgets in the 1990s almost balanced (they didn't quite, the National Debt still increased every year of Clinton's presidency. But a few of them came very close)
Clinton fought against both agenda items, and vetoed them several times. The Republican congress kept re-passing them, and finally, with the 1996 election coming, Clinton signed them, saying they were "broken but we'll fix them later" - something he never actually did. Today, Democrats are falling all over themselves, trying to take credit for these policies.
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Bush doubled down on these risky practices!
