Perhaps it's because the GOP is just as to blame as the Jackass party. Note the years the purchasing ballooned. Who was in control of Congress and the White House?
When HUD released the next set of goals in 2004, it reported that after Cuomo's previous edict, there had been a sudden spurt of GSE subprime investment, "partly in response to higher affordable-housing goals set by HUD in 2000." Fannie had gone from $1.2 billion in subprime-mortgage and securities purchases in 2000 to $9.2 billion in 2001 and $15 billion in 2002. Freddie's numbers were murkier, but clearly also on the rise. In 2003 alone, the two bought $81 billion in subprime securities—which also count against the goals.
Fannie also developed a "flexible" product line, providing up to 100 percent financing and requiring borrowers to make as little as a $500 contribution, and bought $13.7 billion of those loans in 2003. In addition to subprime loans and securities, both banks burst into the "alt-a" market, making alternative products easily available to borrowers who had slightly better credit histories than subprime borrowers, but were unwilling to provide full documentation of their financial histories. (It was the "alt-a" investments that recently brought down the private bank IndyMac.) These risky adventures, according to the 2004 HUD report, prompted Freddie to claim that "the increased goals created tension in its business practices between meeting the goals and conducting responsible lending practices," a self-serving attempt to plant the blame back on HUD.
After this initial uptick, the two banks purchased $434 billion in securities backed by subprime loans between 2004 and 2006. The Washington Post noted this June that the GSEs' aggressive acquisitions "created a market for more such lending" by others, feeding the fire. No one knows just how big a bite the subprime mess is now taking out of the GSEs, or how much of that portfolio will ultimately go bad, but it has become axiomatic that, whatever the total, it is too much, since it will have seriously shaken confidence in these two linchpin institutions.
From here.
Bush tried, many times, to get Congress to control Fannie Mae and other GSEs
Bush warned that Fannie Mae was getting too large.
Some Republicans tried to get reform in 2005-2006.
The Democrats had a stranglehold on Congress.
Remember the "obstructionists?"
Democrats controlled the Senate for MOST of the 107th Congress
(Remember Jim Jeffords' defection, which put TOM DASCHLE in charge of the Senate?)
The Democrats controlled both houses for all of the 110th Congress.
Democrats voted to authorize the war in Iraq. That didn't stop them from blaming Bush for it when it went sour. People understood that Democrats were just along for the ride and that the real responsibility for the war rested with Republicans.
Similarly, the public understands that Republicans may have hitched a ride on the affordable housing bandwagon, but Democrats drove it. Republicans can also point out that they tried to stop the thing before it went over a cliff.
When the financial crisis struck the problem could have been characterized either as Wall Street scandal demonstrating the limitations of capitalism or as a Pennsylvania Avenue scandal demonstrating the dangers of socialism. Problems with capitalism help Democrats. Problems with socialism help Republicans.
So naturally McCain set out to make everyone understand that the enemy was Wall Street greed. He railed about CEO compensation and promised to fire Chris Cox, repeatedly shooting himself in the foot. Weeks went by before he so much as mentioned Fannie, Freddie, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd (maybe he just got his Chris's mixed up.)
McCain just punted on a powerful argument and not because anybody is afraid that it would backfire. McCain didn't make that argument when the time was ripe, for two reasons — He doesn't really understand it, and making it wouldn't be nice.
The man is a dolt.
We know that the Democrats are trying to hide the fact that Democrats ran the Senate for almost half of Bush’s presidency. They obstructed the Republicans during the other half of Bush’s presidency.
This is the transcript of one of the FIRST press conferences given by the hateful man who was in charge of the Senate for most of 2001 and all of 2002.
He couldn’t wait to get to the microphone to belittle the intelligence of the folks who supported the missile defense program.
By the time he was through with the press conference, his own nasty streak had done him in.
Transcript from
TOM DASCHLE’S PRESS CONFERENCE, in 2001, on the NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE PROGRAM
Whether or not we want to violate the ABM treaty
especially with a concept [NMD program] that we may not know
...or...
that we do know now does not work
is something that also mystifies me.
I mean
Every aspect of the debate and the consideration
that is given this whole program
is... is troubling to me.
I... I mean... I...there’s a disconnect there.
I mean...It just seems common sense....
I mean...there’s no brain..
THIS ISN’T ROCKET SCIENCE HERE...
Yes it IS rocket science....
that’s the problem..
Hadn’t thought about that..
As I just think out loud ....
as I meander through here.
(laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh)
That’s the problem.