Ravenwood - 10/10/08 06:00 AM
The New York Times sounded the alarm about the subprime mortgage snafu nine years ago. From September 30, 1999:
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits. . .In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending [subprime mortgages], Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.
''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''
Of course it's Bush's fault. The object of the Clinton program was to get homeownership in larger numbers among the poorer folk, so when they can't pay the government should bail them out. My Stalinist Brother told me that. Also, Bush signed the bill that bundled the crappy loans in with the other loans, causing this crisis. My Stalinist Sister-in-Law told me so. She also said that the brush fire that started Sunday in Los Angeles was his fault too, because of all the foreclosed homes in some new subdivision I had never heard of, that left the subdivision so empty the fire was able to spread through it. I of course had heard nothing of this, and believed the fire to be due to the firebugs being drawn out by the Santa Ana winds. Come to find out later that there were hardly any homes in the Sunday fire. Talk about Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Posted by: Windy Wilson at October 15, 2008 1:26 AM(c) Ravenwood and Associates, 1990 - 2014