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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (29787)	10/13/2008 2:12:41 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Trying to limit blame to one area is oversimplistic, esp. when the different areas worked together and effected each other. * More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions. * Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year. Irrelevant to charges about Fannie and Freddie sharing the blame as they didn't originate mortgages. * Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics. Again it says nothing about Fannie and Freddie. And the housing law had a general indirect effect of contributing to pushing down lending standards. But these loans, and those to low- and moderate-income families represent a small portion of overall lending. The proportion of overall lending isn't the issue, the prorportion of non-performing mortgages would be a much more relevant stat. The article makes the main point that it wasn't a failure of government action but it doesn't even mention all sorts of forms of government action that contributed to the crisis, it only mentions the CRA and Fannie and Freddie, leaving aside different types of distortion from income taxes, and general political pressure to expand lending to poorly qualified applicants. It also doesn't address the way the money supply was handled.