Free Republic

Democrats on Monday stepped up pressure on the Bush administration to let Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy more mortgages than their portfolios currently allow to forestall an “October surprise” of subprime mortgage resets. In a letter to Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, Barney Frank, chairman of the House financial services committee, criticised the administration’s reluctance to lift caps on the two government-sponsored mortgage portfolios as “a triumph of a fairly rigid ideology over the facts of the situation”. Mr Frank’s comments came after Chuck Schumer, senator from New York, introduced a bill to temporarily lift the caps...