Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Carter and Clinton lit the flames of the Fannie/Freddie fire

Guest Columnist J. Dori Callahan

In the current financial crises there is blame aplenty, however, I think people are failing to look at where this socialism/communism/fascism actually started.

From an article dated September 30, 1999, in New York Times: “In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loan that will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets—including the New York metropolitan region will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the CLINTON ADMINISTRATION to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people.”

The article goes on to predict that such a strategy might not cause problems during times of economic prosperity but that Fanny Mae could run into serious financial difficulty during an economic downturn”.

From JudicialWatch.org, “while the Clinton administration is certainly culpable for getting the ball rolling on these high-risk loans, there is plenty of blame to go around. Fannie Mae led by Clinton’s former budget director, Franklin Raines and Obama Campaign advisor Jim Johnson took Clinton’s risky gamble and doubled down. These two men cooked the books at Fannie Me, issued countless mortgages, and then took huge bonuses before leaving the company. “

And before Clinton pushed this forward, the Carter administration started it by mandating these low cost mortgages to the lower income groups.

“Despite the accounting problems and dire warnings of crisis, these “government sponsored enterprises, with the full support of the liberals in congress and their special-interest community organizing friends such as ACORN pushed for more subprime lending for their politically correct constituencies.”

Now the entire country is facing financial disaster.