The run up in housing prices was due to low interest rates and economic demand. The run up only occurred in specific areas of the US namely CA and FL. The HUD requirement for 55% of mortgages be granted to low income borrowers came from Clinton. The R's initiated legislation years prior to 2007 but the D's killed it in committee. But it was too late for the conflagration of banking regulations to wipe out bank reserves which banking regulations had deemed as having negligibly low risk. What was supposed to not happen did indeed happen and since all the banks held MBS's their reserves were wiped out.
United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs archives 2005 As you can clearly see why the President was opposed to H.R. 1461 because it "fails to include key elements that are essential to protect the safety and soundness of the housing finance system and the broader financial system at large" AND "H.R. 1461 is considerably weaker than that which governs other large, complex financial institutions". The Democrats fought S.190 in the Senate. The Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 (S. 190). The Republicans couldn't get enough Democrat support to bring the bill to a vote.
Why did Bush dismsntle SEC enforcement? Why did he get the DoJ to deal with widesprad fraud? Why didn't Bush use the bully pulpit to undermine the corrupt securitizing of mortgages?
Provide proof that he did, no fake news please. What fraud are you talking about? They tried but the Democrats had to many seats to advance any meaningful bills. As you can clearly see why the President was opposed to H.R. 1461 because it "fails to include key elements that are essential to protect the safety and soundness of the housing finance system and the broader financial system at large" AND "H.R. 1461 is considerably weaker than that which governs other large, complex financial institutions". A stronger bill in the Senate (The Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 (S. 190)) failed along party lines with the Democrats fighting it. Turns out they were right.
Fannie and Freddie were REQUIRED to devote a percentage to "affordable housing", read that lending to folks who could barely pay it back. No doubt HUD just kept bumping that percentage up and up and up. In 1992 the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate.
Clinton bumped it up to 50%. Bush 43 who also mistakenly believed in the program bumped it up to 55%. What have here is a massive failure of government which caused tragic harm to those it meant to help. The lesson is that it’s not acceptable to govern without full consideration of what could go wrong and what the consequences would be. MBS’s along with government bonds were defined by Basel 1 as being extremely safe. That is why they had the lowest reserve requirement and that is why the vast majority of banks used them. No one thought through the consequences of the failure of these very very safe securities.
"Counter," intelligence investigation? Most Republicans have agreed Sessions did exactly the right thing by recusing himself. And it is not the job of the AG to protect a President from investigation... AND the FISA warrant was not a result of the Dossier, but from a conversation in an Aussie bar...
That’s correct. Do your homework. It’s the job of the AG to enforce the rule of law. Part of that is ensuring that any FISA warrant is based on solid evidence. The dossier was a joke. As is the conversation in a bar. Do yourself a favor and do some actual homework on how the Obama administration used a manufactured assertion that Carter Page a Nava Academy graduate (top 10% of his class) and 5 year veteran was. Russian operative to spy on the Trump campaign. It’s as disgusting an abuse of power that this nation has ever experienced. What has Page been indicted for ?? This investigation is a joke which Rod Rosenstein signed off on.
https://www.nysun.com/business/ex-sec-official-blames-agency-for-blow-up/86130/ https://www.cnbc.com/id/27005436 http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1843519,00.html "The five enforcement officials caught a morning Acela train bound for Washington. Based at the New York office of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the team was seeking agency approval to impose tens of millions of dollars in fines on a drug company, Biovail, which had allegedly used the crash of a truck hauling depression medicine to cover up financial losses. But when the group arrived at SEC headquarters on that winter day early last year, it was barred from the room where the commission was meeting, according to a person familiar with the case. Chairman Christopher Cox and his colleagues reviewed the case inside. When the doors opened, the enforcement officials learned the commission had knocked down the penalty to a small fraction of what they had sought. The outcome, though discouraging to the team, was not a complete surprise, sources said. After Cox became SEC chairman in mid-2005, he adopted practices that undermined the enforcement division's efforts to investigate cases of corporate wrongdoing and punish those involved, according to interviews with 19 current and former SEC officials. During Cox's tenure, investigators who wanted to subpoena documents or compel interviews faced an increasingly cumbersome process to win the commission's approval for each case, according to current and former agency officials. Cox also required enforcement officials to see the commissioners before approaching a company about a civil settlement. In several high-profile cases, when SEC lawyers were ready to ask the commission to authorize lawsuits or approve settlements, Cox postponed the decisions at the last minute, leaving cases unresolved for months, the sources said. At times, as in the Biovail case, the commission eventually weakened the sanctions sought by the enforcement division." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/31/AR2009053102254.html
My point remains--mortgagees created the bad mortgages because they could package them up as commercial paper, not to do the bidding of Fannie and Freddie.
