Another Opinion

Quote from KnowOzymandias

I think everyone agrees the economy suffered greatly due to the linkage between home loans, credit default swaps and the financial community.

I would also ask consider that the primary cause for home loan problems were people that should have never been able to get a mortgage much less have several mortgages that they flipped.

How did these unqualified people get the loans that they couldn't make the payments?

Go back to the following as one of the contributing factors:

1) "ACORN showed its colors again in 1991, by taking over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the CRA. Obama represented ACORN in the Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 1994 suit against redlining. Most significant of all, ACORN was the driving force behind a 1995 regulatory revision pushed through by the Clinton Administration that greatly expanded the CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) and laid the groundwork for the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac borne financial crisis we now confront.

Barack Obama was the attorney representing ACORN in this effort.
With this new authority, ACORN used its subsidiary, ACORN Housing, to promote subprime loans more aggressively." http://www.democracyforums.com/showthread.php?t=19599

2) the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealing Glass-Steagall was wrong.
This allowed tremendous investment opportunities because Fannie/Freddie under the "full faith and credit" of the USA would guarantee there would be nothing to lose! Securitization of mortgage bundles that funded by margins less then 10%, became lucrative instruments to financial institutions!

3) "When warned about Fannie Mae in (House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) criticized the President [Bush] warning saying: "these two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis....

The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing." (New York Times, 9/11/03)

And then Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Chairman Christopher Dodd also ignored the President's warnings and called on him to "immediately reconsider his
ill-advised" position. . Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis... (New York Times, 9/11/03.

So loans made to unqualified people that were guaranteed by Fannie/Freddie would securitized and further leveraged much like commodity contracts created the economic crisis.

The blame is equally shared by Democrats/GOP alike but the fundamental objective was to get unqualified borrowers to become voters in the manner of the Motor Voter scam of the 1990s.