While there is some blame to be shared by members on both sides of the aisle, history reveals the following:

Under such catch phrases as “affordable housing”, the “Community Reinvestmet Act” of 1977 (President Jimmy Carter) was enacted. It’s stated purpose was to expand the opportunity of high-risk individuals to invest in homes by forcing mortgage lenders to help subprime borrowers get better loans. Industry lending procedures were further opened during the Clinton administration, a period during which Franklin Raines (then CEO of Freddie Mac) garnered in excess of $90 million over a four-year tour while serving the quasi-governmental

lending institution. Today, Raines serves as financial adviser to Barack Hussein Obama during his campaign. Over a 20 year period, only four of which Obama has been a Senator – and, he’s been campaigning for two of those years, now – only Senate veteran Chris Dodd has taken more lobbyist monies from Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac than has Obama (he’s #2, having accepted over $126,000). Earlier this year, Dodd extended his praise to these financial giants, describing them as “riding to the rescue” as other mortgage lenders were reducing loans.

Barney Frank, senator from Massachusetts and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, only five years ago asserted as to the “soundness” of these companies. “I do not see”, he said, any “possibility of serious financial losses to the treasury.” Furthermore, he stated that the government has “probably done too
little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing.”

These are a few of the major players whom have created the financial “crisis”, and now these same people are presumably working in earnest to resolve the matter? Yeah, right.

President Bush, in 2004, sought to increase regulatory pressures on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and his chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors warned about the economic disincentives of these companies relying on a bailout should trends turn. In 2005, John McCain supported a measure to reform the lending industry, but it was rejected by Congress (including a vote against it by Obama – no surprise, there).

Alan Greenspan, head of the Federal Reserve, has been outspoken for years about an implied reliance on our government that these lending giants greedily base business practices upon, so as to “multiply the profitability of subsidized debt.”

Now, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi is playing to the cameras with sound bytes and pointing at the republicans as the root of all evil…what? As the majority, democrats could have passed this bill on their own without a single republican vote, but they didn’t want to go it alone – thereafter, highlighting the roles
of participation that Frank, Dodd and Obama (among others, including some republicans) have played in sustaining the unfettered operations of failed lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And here we are, today.

Facts are facts. See My Site for more.