Posted on 10/02/2008 8:06:15 AM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
MoveOn.org blames McCain advisers. He blames Obama and Democrats in Congress. Both are wrong.
Summary
A MoveOn.org Political Action ad plays the partisan blame game with the economic crisis, charging that John McCain’s friend and former economic adviser Phil Gramm “stripped safeguards that would have protected us.” The claim is bogus. Gramm’s legislation had broad bipartisan support and was signed into law by President Clinton. Moreover, the bill had nothing to do with causing the crisis, and economists – not to mention President Clinton – praise it for having softened the crisis.
A McCain-Palin ad, in turn, blames Democrats for the mess. The ad says that the crisis “didn’t have to happen,” because legislation McCain cosponsored would have tightened regulations on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But, the ad says, Obama "was notably silent" while Democrats killed the bill. That’s oversimplified. Republicans, who controlled the Senate at the time, did not bring the bill forward for a vote. And it’s unclear how much the legislation would have helped, as McCain signed on just two months before the housing bubble popped.
In fact, there’s ample blame to go around. Experts have cited everyone from home buyers to Wall Street, mortgage brokers to Alan Greenspan.
(Excerpt) Read more at factcheck.org ...
Factcheck is already discredited, like Wikipedia. Stop using them.
Can’t believe factcheck. They are tied to Obama through the Annenburg Foundation.
They’re occasionally correct, kind of like a blind squirrel.
It’s a total crock. Go to the end of the article where they “lay blame”. Even though they mention that
Frank and other Dems blocked legislation from 2000 on, in the end they receive no blame.
LOL...
it’s an ok article, but when they say Bush Admin didn’t provide oversight...they don’t give an example of what they could have done to prevent it.
The approach here is to blame everyone since by blaming everyone, no one suffers the consequences of their actions.
But the bottom line is that the crisis never would have happend had Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac underwriting criteria not been dramatically relaxed so that people who could not afford loans were able to get them. That is THE single determining factor in my view. All other factors were dependant upon the underwriting criteria being relaxed.
Quote from Franklin Raines in 2003 Fannie Mae annual report:
“Ten years ago, for example, the typical conforming mortgage required a down payment of 10 to 20 percent, and low-down payment mortgages were considered too risky. But then we helped to standardize the 3 to 5 percent down payment loan, brought it to global capital markets, and made it available to lenders and communities nationwide. Now low-down payment loans are commonplace. And we just adopted a new variance in our underwriting standards that will make the $500 down payment loan widely available as well...”
Gutless Republicans.
They were afraid of the 'Race Card' being played during the "filibuster".
Notice "Annenberg" in the title. It's Annenberg Public Policy Center... from the same group (The Annenberg Foundation) that paid for Barack Obama's & Bill Ayer's radical collaboration (The Annenberg Challenge) into public education... and the same group that provided funding to the group ACORN, which supplies Obama's red-brigades to subvert America's housing market & voting process.
Any wonder why the irresponsible mortgage lending practices pushed by the Community Reinvestment Act & ACORN were not mentioned?
CORRECTION: objectivity last = objectivity lasts
As for FactCheck, the article cited here is very accurate and gives a good overview. With the Annenberg name associated with it, one should be rightly skeptical, but the lefties will trust this more then, say, FreeRepublic, and it stated a long list of Rat-caused problems.
The one issue I have with the article is that in the Senate, the committee didn’t have a super-majority so they dropped the GSE reform. But, as the article points out, they should have pushed harder. They also don’t list Greenspan’s dire warnings. But overall, it’s pretty well done for a left-wing-nut organization.
Anyone who relies on a single source of the truth will never find it - save The Bible.
Everybody is to blame… no wait, nobody is at fault… just move along. /sarcasm
FactCheck fails to understand that trust is a hard thing to gain, but an easy thing to lose. Add politicians, media, et al. They have lost my trust. I don’t believe a single syllable anymore.
The senate democrats weakened the bill to the point that Bush threatened to veto it. So democrats didn’t want it for one reason and republicans didn’t want it for another.
can you give me a thread or resource regarding the discrediting of factcheck.org?
I’m currently engaged in an argument with someone who keeps citing them, and I’d like to counter them.
thanks
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