[dragnet2]

Ya know, Clinton was just another career politically hack, but there should come a day when some of the people here should stop blaming Clinton. It's almost 8 years now since this fat nosed liar held office.

Our leadership from the top down *reeks*.

[T. Buzzard Trueblood]

the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law

I knew Carter had to have something to do with this mess...

[singfreedom]

This is PRECISELY what my sister, a real estate attorney has said. She's predicted this for years now. We've only been waiting for the affirmation.

According to Sis, lenders were totally FORBIDDEN to throughly vette loan applicants to such an extent that folks could, almost, walk into a loan office and simply “request” a loan of any amount, regardless of income-—and get it! There are some REAL horror stories out there and the blame belongs squarely at Clinton's door.

[publiusF27]

While government arguably has a role in helping low-income folks buy a home, Clinton went overboard by strong-arming lenders with tougher and tougher regulations, which only led to lenders taking on hundreds of billions in subprime bilge.

A little political manipulation will always grow into full blown looting.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Bookmarked.

[cschroe]

Frankly, the real culprit in all of this is GREED. Greed by the financial houses, greed by the mortgage lenders, greed by the consumers. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

[SBprone]

This thread is remarkable in that most everyone who has posted is being misled by their ideological bias into seeing leftist culprits as the originators of the financial crisis.

The cause of the crisis as far as I can tell is a confluence of powerful and perverse financial incentives that motivated millions of people to do the wrong thing in pursuit of their own financial interests.

Namely:

Mortgage borrowers in pursuit of more cash than they ever dreamed they could get from their collateral.

Home buyers who bought two or three times as much house, in dollar terms, than they ever thought they could afford.

Rental owners who leveraged one or two properties into six or seven and built their real estate empires much faster than they ever dreamed they could.

Mortgage brokers who initiated crazy mortgages with crazy commissions for countless people in the above categories and made five times as much money per year as they ever dreamed possible.

Financial executives and traders who designed and sold collateralized debt obligations by the billions of dollars and made larger profit-based bonuses than they ever imagined they could.

I’m sure this list can be expanded upon. The point is, when so many people at so many different levels of society have a financial incentive to do the wrong thing, and those incentives are all aligned in the same direction, look out. Follow the money is right. And the money wound up in the hands of Democrats, Republicans and people who don’t give a crap about politics at all.

Partisan politics is not the way to model your view of reality, folks.

[huldah1776]

I don’t know about this, but it seems to me the rates went down after 9/11 to stabilize everyone’s jitters, then to keep the economy going the lenders took advantage of a time when the feds weren’t going to say no to easy loans, and gave out loans to almost everyone, not only minorities. The real estate brokers also got on the wagon by raising housing prices because of the feeding frenzy. All to keep the economy going because people realized after 9/11 that their credit debt was through the roof, and jobs weren’t going to pay better or might not be there. Everyone is to blame—but not me. I live paycheck to almost paycheck and keep the economy going by spending real money. :) This is a non-economists view.