Am i really that bad at reading? I looked thru your article on ACORN Richard, and i don’t see where they forced any mortgages. The article basically attacks them for being socialist, populist and anti business, but nothing about how ACORN brought down wallstreet.
3 Years ago fannie mae and freddie mac weren’t buying interest only, adjustable rate mortages,
By Annys Shin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 12, 2005; Page E04Mortgage financing giant Fannie Mae said yesterday that its share of the mortgage-related securities market dropped from 45 percent in 2003 to 29 percent in 2004 because of the growing popularity of adjustable-rate mortgages, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
…..
To a point, housing finance experts agreed with Fannie that its drop in market share was attributable to the proliferation of adjustable-rate mortgages. They noted that Fannie typically does not buy adjustable-rate loans from retail mortgage lenders because the lenders generally do not want to sell them.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/11/AR2005051102030.html
By David S. Hilzenrath
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 19, 2008; Page D01In January 2007, as years of loose mortgage lending were about to send the nation’s housing market into devastating decline, Fannie Mae chief executive Daniel H. Mudd wrote a confidential memo to his board.
Discussing the company’s successes, Mudd said one of Fannie Mae’s achievements in 2006 was expanding its involvement in the market for subprime and other nontraditional mortgages. He called it a step “toward optimizing our business.”
A month later, Fannie Mae outlined plans to further expand its activities in the subprime market. The company recognized the already weak performance of subprime loans but predicted that they would get better in 2007, according to another Fannie Mae document.
Internal documents show that even late in the housing bubble, Fannie Mae was drawn to risky loans by a variety of temptations, including the desire to increase its market share and fulfill government quotas for the support of low-income borrowers.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/18/AR2008081802111.html
So there we see in the last 2 years, suddenly fannie mae and freddie mac were pushed into buying this crap by their need to grow their business and their belief that it met their mandate to help low-income borrowers. So we finally have a link to CRA, 31 years old and finally, for the last couple of years, it was able forced Fannie and Freddie to buy crap. Let’s forget about the motivation to grow their shrinking market share, that they a publicly traded stock and management get’s pain based on stock performance.
“Frannie” were the last into to this BS before it blew up. Goldman Sacks started selling out in January 2007(maybe to Frannie), CountryWide started to collapse spring of 2007, Bear Stearns hedge fund in Summer 2007. Last i checked the Executive Branch (White House) runs the government, the treasury department, federal reserve, etc. So democrats, finally after 25+ years of CRA meaning nothing more but hostile Congressional hearings, pushed the White House into giving all the money away to poor people who blew it on McMasions? Damn Democrats, Damn Obama.