Thread: Guess again who's to blame for U.S. mortgage meltdown

Guess again who's to blame for U.S. mortgage meltdown
Analysts point not to greed, but to social activist politics

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Posted: September 19, 2008
6:19 pm Eastern


By Drew Zahn
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

While many pundits are pointing to corporate greed and a lack of government regulation as the cause for the American mortgage and financial crisis, some analysts are saying it wasn't too little government intervention that cased the mortgage meltdown, but too much, in the form of activists compelling the government to pressure Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae into unsound – though politically correct – lending practices.

"Home mortgages have been a political piñata for many decades," writes Stan J. Liebowitz, economics professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, in a chapter of his forthcoming book, Housing America: Building out of a Crisis.

Liebowitz puts forward an explanation that he admits is "not consistent with the nasty-subprime-lender hypothesis currently considered to be the cause of the mortgage meltdown."

In a nutshell, Liebowitz contends that the federal government over the last 20 years pushed the mortgage industry so hard to get minority homeownership up, that it undermined the country's financial foundation to achieve its goal.

"In an attempt to increase homeownership, particularly by minorities and the less affluent, an attack on underwriting standards was undertaken by virtually every branch of the government since the early 1990s," Liebowitz writes. "The decline in mortgage underwriting standards was universally praised as 'innovation' in mortgage lending by regulators, academic specialists, (government-sponsored enterprises) and housing activists."

He continues, "Although a seemingly noble goal, the tool chosen to achieve this goal was one that endangered the entire mortgage enterprise."

"As homeownership rates increased there as self-congratulation all around," Liebowitz writes. "The community of regulators, academic specialists, and housing activists all reveled in the increase in homeownership."

An article in the Los Angeles Times from the late '90s praised the sudden surge in homeownership among minorities, calling it "one of the hidden success stories of the Clinton era."

John Lott, a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, however, claimed in a Fox News article yesterday that the success came at a great price.

According to Lott, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston produced a manual in the early '90s that warned mortgage lenders to no longer deny urban and lower-income minority applicants on such "outdated" criteria as credit history, down payment or employment income.

Furthermore, claims Lott, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac encouraged and praised lenders – like Countrywide and Bear Stearns – for adopting the slackened policies toward minority applicants.

"Given these lending practices mandated by the Fed and encouraged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," writes Lott, "the resulting financial problems for financial institutions such as Countrywide and Bear Stearns are not too surprising."

Liebowitz' contention that lenders were under pressure to loosen their standards for racial and political goals was confirmed years ago by the companies at the heart of today's crisis: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

A New York Times article from Sept. 1999 states that Fannie Mae had been under increasing pressure from the Clinton administration to expand mortgage loans among low- and moderate-income people and that the corporation loosened its lending requirements to comply.

An ominous paragraph of the article reads, "In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980s."

Liebowitz likewise predicted in a 1998 paper the risk of sacrificing sound financial policy for social activism.

"After the warm fuzzy glow of 'flexible underwriting standards' has worn off," Liebowitz wrote, "we may discover that they are nothing more than standards that led to bad loans. … It will be ironic and unfortunate if minority applicants wind up paying a very heavy price for a misguided policy based on a badly mangled idea."

And though some have speculated that lenders in the '90s dove into sub-prime mortgages in an effort to gouge new markets, the president and chief operating officer of Freddie Mac in 1999, David Glenn, confessed his company was pushed by a federal agenda.

"The mortgage industry intends to pursue minorities with greater intensity as federal regulators turn up the heat to increase home ownership," Glenn said in his remarks at the annual convention of the Mortgage Banker Association of America.

"The federal government in the meantime has increased pressure on lenders to seek out minorities, as well as low-income groups and borrowers with poor credit histories," Glenn said. "Fannie Mae recently reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to commit half its business to low- and moderate-income borrowers. That means half the mortgages bought by Fannie Mae would be from those income brackets."

In that same year, Freddie Mac warned of the logical pitfalls of pursuing loans on the basis of skin color and not credit history.

The Washington Post reported that the company conducted a study in which it was found that far more black people have bad credit than white people, even when both have the same incomes. In fact, the study showed a higher percentage of African Americans with incomes of $65,000 to $75,000 had bad credit than white Americans with incomes of below $25,000.

Such data demonstrated that when federal regulators demanded parity between racial groups in lending, the only way to achieve a quota would be to begin making intentionally bad lending decisions.

The study, however, came under brutal attack in the U.S. Congress and was ridiculed with charges of racism.

A few years later, when Greg Mankiw, chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, voiced a warning about weakened underwriting standards, Congress rebuffed him as well.

The Wall Street Journal quoted Congressman Barney Frank, D-Mass., in 2003 as criticizing Greg Mankiw "because he is worried about the tiny little matter of safety and soundness rather than 'concern about housing.'"

Frank, Chair of the House Financial Services Committee, rejected a Bush administration and Congressional Republican plan for regulating the mortgage industry in 2003, saying, "These two entities – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – are not facing any kind of financial crisis." According to a New York Times article, Frank added, "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

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U.S. government should bail out of bailouts
Craig R. Smith
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Posted: September 18, 2008
8:43 pm Eastern

© 2008 WorldNetDaily

The last thing government officials should do is try to bail us out of the economic crisis they are responsible for creating in the first place.

The lack of oversight provided by Chris Dodd and Barney Frank of the Banking and Financial Services subcommittee is unprecedented and should require the immediate dismissal of both men. Their decisions, which have in large part brought about the current market crisis, make the decisions made during Hurricane Katrina look like sheer genius.

Campaign contributions have a miraculous way of clouding any career politician's ability to make intelligent choices that would directly benefit the American public. They know those choices will greatly disappoint their 'masters' who run Wall Street and thus slow the flow of campaign money for re-election.

Dodd and Frank had the direct responsibility, in congressional oversight, to protect the American public against abuses of the system. They did not!

I would love to see the campaign contribution records of Dodd and Frank from the banks and financial services companies now at the trough looking for taxpayer money to save them from the very folly that lined their pocket with billions.

Or maybe we should take a closer look at Clinton appointees like Jamie Gorelick and Franklin Raines who were paid a combined salary of $125 million from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. How about the contributions from Bears Stearns, JP Morgan, AIG, and Merrill Lynch to both political parties who allowed the shenanigans to continue unabated while many watched the problems grow worse by the day?

The fact is this whole crisis was avoidable. As far back as 1987 there were calls in Congress for oversight in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Yet the Clinton administration had no interest. Instead the "more is better," "chicken in every pot" mentality in America forced officials like Barney Frank to allow lenders' greed and Wall Street's hunger for huge fees to create a culture of corruption never before seen in American history.

Democrats, at the time, ignored the fact that many loans were being made to completely unqualified borrowers to buy homes they clearly could not afford. Overnight, home ownership in America became a birthright under the Democrats. Discussions with the Congressional Black Caucus and housing executives from Fannie and Freddie were just one example of how the Democratic Party encouraged irresponsible borrowing behavior.

So what do we do now? We must suffer the pain and do the hard yet necessary things to return to reality or we had better get prepared for a whole lot more pain. These problems did not happen overnight and the solutions will not come overnight. But the longer we fool ourselves with feel-good government bailouts, the longer the problem will remain.

Why are we turning to the very perpetrators for the answers to the problems they caused in the first place? Are we crazy? Go back to the same folks who broke it for a fix?

Free markets works when they are operated under accountability. The only effective help the government can offer would be to immediate halt wasteful spending and begin to reduce the national debt. Fiscal responsibility at the government level would do more to instill confidence than any bailout a bureaucrat can offer. Bureaucrat bailouts are designed to bring new contributions into their campaigns. That is a huge part of the problem. Bailouts do not work unless they are accompanied with accountability.

It would be easy enough to kid ourselves and allow the government to throw huge amounts of taxpayer dollars at the problems and pass it all on to future generations. But that would be like putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. The patient will still bleed to death, just at a slower pace.

Accountability, not blame, is required NOW. Sacrifice, not politics, is the necessary cure. I know it isn't a popular message but it is reality. Americans are willing to do what it takes to strengthen the country if they know they will not be burned once again by politicians who are more interested in power and position than they are about what is best for America.

It is time for the speaker of the House to drop her blame game and do what is best for America. It is nauseating to listen to the speaker lay blame at the feet of the current administration when she knows all too well that her democratically controlled Congress blocked all attempts to regulate the industry. Why can't both sides stop the attacks and start with the bipartisan cooperation they allegedly desire?

Our best years are ahead if we learn from the mistakes that have been made and not look to government for the answers to our problems. Government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem. We must work together. We must allow free markets to punish those who did wrong, weed out the weak borrowers and reward those who borrowed honestly. If we don't, we are headed for even more difficult times.

We can avoid those difficult times if we believe in less government, more personal responsibility and accountability from leaders in both the private and public sectors.


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