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."
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."