[djl_sa]

NO.

But unfortunately in politics as the sitting president when thing hit the fan he gets the immediate blame. Although 40 years from now it will be looked on differently with a longer term view on the various aspects that lead up to this including what you posted.

[LouAvul]

It was whoever forced the mortgage industry to issue loans to subprime borrowers. Once those "standards" were in place, the bubble blew up.

Now, who could that have been? Hmmm?

[Frantzie]

CRA, Fannie & Freedie, Frank-Dodd-Congressional Black Caucus protecting Fannie & Freddie, O’s hedge fund short [als like Soros and offshore crash money - probably the Saudis.

the stock market discounts the future i.e. anticipates events 6 to 12 months in advance.

Look at the chart of the S&P 500 or DOW around June 2008 when Hillary had the nomination stolen from her by ACORN thugs at caucuses. When she was finally out around June 2008 - the market started slipping. Fall of 2008 when McCain’s poll numbers were weak - the market knew it was over. Tiny rally a few days before election with a glimmer of “hope.” After O was elected down, after sworn in down.

This is all about O, Pelosi & Reid 2006 Congressional control and total socialist fraud from CRA and crony capitalism with O cronies destroying Fannie & freddie from inside, Raines, Gorelnick, Rahm, and others. Stan O’NEil possibly at Merrill as Merrill never did mortgages before Stan.

[EagleUSA]

That is really an easy one to answer. At least Bush did not deliberately try to bring down our economy to suit some twisted anti-American agenda. He did not put our generation, and future generations, into extreme debt just to finance a socialist agenda and future empowerment. He did not ATTEMPT TO INTIMIDATE AMERICANS to suppress dissent against radical, anti-American, unconstitutional agendas.

And at least he did NOT LIE ABOUT REAL TAX CUTS. No, I will take Bush back any day compared to what we are stuck with now.

[geologist]

for emphasis ... excerpt ...

“The Banks and community groups issued loans to low-income individuals who often had bad credit or insufficient income. And these loans, which became known as “Subprime” loans, made available 100% financing, did not always require the use of credit scores, and were even made without documenting income. Basically, the government insisted that banks abandon traditional underwriting standards if the bank wanted to grow. Not to mention that in 1992 Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were pressured by the HUD to purchase large bundles of these loans for the conflicting purposes of diversifying the risk and making even more money available to banks to make further risky loans.

Congress also passed the Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act which eventually mandated that these companies by 45% of all loans from people of low and moderate incomes. The Treasury Department also established the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, which provided banks with tax dollars to encourage even more risky loans.”
...
__________________________________________________________

Thank you for this article. You have provided the basic causes here ... Stupid decisions, as policy long term.

Implemented by and added onto the extension of the ‘civil rights’ decisions begun during Lyndon Johnson's presidency.

God have mercy on your people. Amen.

[SQUID]

Dear Clueless Writer:

The fact is our elected representatives failed to represent the people and they have all contributed to the problems America faces. I'm sick of the idiotic blame game. You will loose taking this route.

Government has lost it's way and Congress has failed the people. The executive office has failed. Bush “suspended free market principals to save them”. What a crock of crapola with granola.

So, here are a couple dollars so someone can help you with your bags. You're obsolete. Off you go.

[DaisyCutter]

Yes, in part. Along with the Fed, Congresscritters in both parties, Clintoon and his administration, and Obama and his administration.

[FlashBack]

Only up to a point...the actions of the ‘Zero’ administration has made this worse ten-fold.

[rlmorel]

There are four KEY reasons why we are in the boat we are today (according to Mark Levin’s brilliant explanation in his book “Liberty and Tyranny”):

1.) Community Reinvestment Act (CRA)
*****************
This was implemented by a liberal Democrat controlled Congress in conjunction with a liberal Democrat president to ostensibly combat “red lining”, the purported practice of denying people loans on the basis of their race or ethnicity. In 1989, under President GHW Bush and a Democrat Congress, the recording of race data became a requirement on mortgage applications (I think it was the Federal Home Disclosure Act (FHDA ). In 1992, the Boston Federal Reserve did a study and found what they alleged was widespread racism in lending. This study was subsequently debunked by independent researchers who found profound errors such as the inclusion of mortgage rates with negative values that significantly skewed the data. This study was used as is by the Clinton Administration to justify regulations implemented by the Clinton Justice Department in 1995 that applied “grades” to lending institutions that supposedly reflected the “inherent racism” in their lending processes. These regulations also opened up avenues for groups like Neighborhood Association Coalition (NAC), ACORN and the Rainbow Coalition to petition regulators to deny lending institutions the right to acquire other institutions, merge with them, or expand their facilities or branches. Basically, it opened them up to the same kind of extortion that Jesse Jackson’s group has been subjecting corporations to for years, except that in this case, it wasn’t just public opinion they were using to extort, it was the power of the government to restrict business operations.

2.) Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae getting a government mandate to securitize sub-prime mortgages.
*****************
In 1993 (I think) the government mandated that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae had to buy up these sub-prime loans. It did this for two reasons that seem mutually exclusive: to reduce the risk of the loans, and also to make more money available to people for these risky loans. Basically, they were giving loans away to people who had no business to get a mortgage. Many of them had NO lending history or BAD history, had no collateral, were not obliged to make any down payments. These loans amount to over 4.5 TRILLION DOLLARS. This is ALL the doing of liberals and the Democrat party.

3.) The explosion of derivatives in the sub-prime market.
*****************
As this was explained, a derivative is basically someone purchasing the risk on a loan in return for payments of some kind. It is a form of investment which in this type of market was EXTREMELY risky. But with the environment where the people responsible for making money saw this as a viable investment option. (Those of you out there who understand this, please pipe in and explain it, because I think I understand it imperfectly here)

4.) The Federal Reserve’s excessive meddling with the interest rates beginning in 2001.
*****************
The problem here was that the Federal Reserve’s excessive intrusion removed market forces from playing an appropriate role in the regulation of interest rates, and kept them abnormally low when they should not have been.

Of all of these, President Bush has *some* culpability on the Federal Reserve’s meddling. Not all, but there is responsibility there.

With all due respect to Mark Levin, I would include another two factors here:]

5.) Energy Policies.
*****************
Liberal energy policies drove energy prices on commodities such as gasoline to more than $4 a gallon. Many of these people who had no business being a homeowner found themselves in a position where energy prices were driving the cost of everything through the roof, and they couldn’t make ends meet. It is their own responsibility they ended up in that situation, but I firmly believe this was part of the liberal’s goals. After all, Saul Alinsky who is a demi-God to people like Obama and Hillary, makes the case that you have to make people angry and hurt in order to get them on your side. It was the job of liberals to exacerbate the situation and make it as bad as possible. And many so-called “conservatives” played right along with them.

6.) Democrat meddling and cover ups of financial monkey business.
*****************
Liberals inhabit nearly all the top fiscal positions in government, and were the vast majority of the recipients of campaign contributions from troubled institutions. Republicans got money too, but nowhere in the numbers taken in by liberals such as Obama, Dodd and Frank. In addition, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have been like a candy store for people like Franklin Delano Raines and Jamie Gorelick who made tens of millions of dollars cooking the books and falsifying paperwork with offenses such as backdating in order to kick in those bonuses. There is no outrage about this. And even while Republicans were trying to issue tocsin after tocsin, people like Frank, Dodd and others in the Democrat party were assuring everyone there was no problem. I fault Bush and other Republicans for NOT making an even BIGGER deal than they did out of this. The guy who ran the government oversight committee was castigated by Maxine Waters (I think it was her) as a racist for pointing out these issues at a hearing.

So, yes. Bush and Republicans DO have some blame. But this is a DEMOCRAT CAUSED CATASTROPHE. Most Americans simply don’t know this, the media won’t say so, and neither will Republicans.

[Beckwith]

Sources point to Obama as a possible starting point to the domino affect that lead to the housing crises we are now facing.  Check the provided links and judge for yourself.

 

"In a 1995 case known as Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank, Obama and his fellow attorneys charged that Citibank was making too few loans to black applicants, "victimized" by home mortgage lenders, and won the case.  As one commentator noted in May 2008, legal "successes" such as this were probably responsible for the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2007 AND 2008.  That is, banks were not loaning to blacks whose credit was poor.  When the law forced them to lend money anyway, the inevitable collapse occurred."

Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank

 

Obama’s Early Legal Career: Heavy on Advocacy for Blacks
 

A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon we're talking about real money

 

Obama had a part in the lawsuit that started the government on a course of forcing lenders to give more loans to those who had poor credit.  Lending companies were forced to come up with imaginative ways of fulfilling the quota that was required.  Sub-prime lending was born as a result.  The mortgage crises was forecast by many who were able to look beyond the quota.

This New York Times article (.pdf) clearly forecast the mortgage meltdown.

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders, ... under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration.

"Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 19902 by reducing ddown payment requirements," said Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer.  "Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market."

Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy.  But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 percent of loans in the conventional loan market.

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, 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 of the 1980s.

"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."

Obama's Community Organizing

[GreatDaggar]

Bush had many successes foreign-policy wise.

But he failed to do anything domestically. Anytime he tried to do anything such as social security reform, it was stalled. He signed off on all legislation from the Congress and pushed more expansive federal government.

Bush did nothing to bring down the size of the federal government and so the past eight years were a wasted opportunity. Obama’s going to exponentially leave grow it and we’ll we be wishing we had those eight years back to downsize and streamline our federal government.

[TheOldLady]

No, but Saul Alinsky says to blame your predecessor when TStuffHTF.

[Shhhh They are watching Us]

Yes, he paved the way for the Dem win. He’s the reason we have Obama. Before you flame, hear me out: that rodent-face, draft-dodging, coke-sniffing, drunk-driving sellout RINO POS ruined the GOP as did his father. A big gubmint spender, started the bailouts, pro-amnesty, such a wimp who couldn’t defend himself in a strong way, deserves to scorned for the rest of his miserable life. I’m sorry but as a hardcore Reaganite, I am so mad at him I’m starting to think he should be hanged.