Unintended consequences had very little to do with the latest Wall Street looting. The trillions of dollars in private debt that have been nationalized since 2008 was a direct consequence of the epidemic of mortgage fraud the FBI began warning about in 2004, with 80% of the deception originating with private lenders.
The GSE's had no choice except to jump on board or watch their marker share evaporate.
If you're still blaming the CRA for telling these private lenders who they should lend to and assuming a huge percentage of these government mandated mortgages have gone bad, where's your evidence showing how CRA mandated loan have defaulted in vastly disproportionate numbers versus the national default rate?
Why didn't CRA Banks that were funding these mortgages fail in even greater numbers than the average bank? Why aren't the portfolios of large national TARP banks littered with toxic CRA defaults?
Why didn't bank execs complain to the Bush White House between 2002-2008 about these CRA mandates unless big government and big money already knew the fix was in?
Since the 345 mortgage brokers that blew up were not covered by CRA legislation and the vast majority of CRA covered banks are healthy, and the biggest foreclosure areas weren't in Harlem or South Central LA, it seems more likely irresponsibly low interest rates precipitated a housing boom while the Fed failed to adequately supervise non-bank lenders.
Radical deregulation of financial markets and a shadow derivative market that operated unlike every other financial product generated compensation schemes that rewarded short term risk over long term profitability.
Increasing the leverage from 12-1 to 35-1 at the major private investment houses also contributed more to the 2008 looting than some legislation written in 1977.
Yeah ok....You ignore the facts and continue to blame Wall Street.
The federal government through the printing of money to cover new spending....
Just a minute...We're not going there...
This is about the real estate bust...
Yes, the warning..Although it was not just the FBI....It was a Congressional Committee that warned of impending financial disaster if Fannie/Freddie was not reined in. Powerful democrats including Maxine Watters, Barney Frank, Mel Watt and Chris Dodd defended the practices and procedures.
Not low interest rates, but low credit standards. Left to operate as in the past, most of the bad loans would never have been made.
I bet you did not know about credit rescores....Oh yes. Back in the boom times, a prospect could walk into a bank or other mortgage company or in many cases, the office of the builder's realtor with shitty credit. All the lender had to do was "rescore" the prospect's credit and VOILA!! Loan approved. Unreal. Many of those loans were done with non verified income or out and out fraudulent information on them....Here's the rub, the federal government was not interested in how these people got their loans, they were concerned only with how many.