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no, that's not waht happened. washington did not force anyone to make bad loans.
Wrong. Liberals like Barney Frank threatened to punish banks for not loaning to "low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods."
We can thank the Community Reinvestment Act for this mess more than anything.
Real Estate Blog - Barney Frank Cried Racism And Look What Happened
The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to "meet the credit needs" of "low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods." Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, encouraged this "subprime" lending by authorizing ever more "flexible" criteria by which high-risk borrowers could be qualified for home loans, and then buying up the questionable mortgages that ensued.