Common sense says that there should be no 100% financing without absolutely perfect credit. Things really got out of hand when banks started giving loans and credit cards to illegals , without even a SS number.
“Things really got out of hand when banks started giving loans and credit cards to illegals , without even a SS number.”
You can thank Bank Of America, under pressure from Pelosi, Boxer, LaRaza, and other California Dems for that one.
Remember the “Hispanic Banking Crisis!” from Circa 2004, and the Kerry run for President?
And you wonder WHY BofA has needed two huge government bailouts?
The entire notion of expanded home ownership as a social engineering goal was and is laughably cart-before-the-horse. It is a means of building wealth and achieving individual economic stability ... if you pay down the note, don’t buy more than you can honestly afford and stay put to the point of owning the home outright, then continue to live in that primary residence to derive the economic benifit of actual ownership.
This we did not encourage, at all. Instead, we ended up with further social engineering enabling individuals with no documentation whatsoever to acquire very costly properties with no skin in the game, no incentive to stick with the mortgage through periodic adversities. This led to inflated prices, strawman buyers and fraud galore. It also led to the price collapse we’ve experienced, thus laying bare even greater malfeasance and fraud further up the food chain in the inancial world, worldwide.
And so here we are.
Governments aided and abetted above and beyond CRA because they were profiting too, from Freddie and Fannie right on down to counties and municipalities, which experienced a boom in tax receipts so long as the game of musical chairs continued. Builders, mortgage brokers and real estate agents were just as guilty themselves. There were private sector bad actors.
It was a feeding frenzy, fed by cheap money and fraud. To claim that the whole mess rests at the feet of President George W. Bush is highly disingenuous to the point of being a politically motivated lie.
He did, however, go along with it and even expand it, so he’s not innocent, either.