Maybe you could stand down wind Maggie.
Andrew Cuomo promised to "transform the lives of millions of families across our country"
when as HUD secretary he announced his historic plan to increase home ownership.
Eleven years later, many experts think that much-heralded transformation played a role in
the devastating subprime mortgage meltdown and the worst economic downturn since the Great
Depression.
"They should have known the risks were large," said Edward J. Pinto, former chief credit
officer at Fannie Mae. "Cuomo was pushing mortgage bankers to make loans and basically saying
you have to offer a loan to everybody."
Pinto argues that Cuomo, now running for governor of New York, helped create the framework
for the subprime crisis by pushing unrealistic and irresponsible affordable housing goals as
head of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
"He was a contributor in terms of him being a cheerleader, but I don't think we can pin too
much blame on him," Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research,
said of Cuomo's role in the subprime crisis.
Baker sees Cuomo as a contributor because he advocated a philosophy that almost everyone
should be able to own a home. And yet, he thinks others, most notably mortgage lenders and
brokers, were the real culprits.
The debate over Cuomo's culpability in the subprime crisis has its roots in his eight-year
record at HUD, most notably his role in:
New requirements that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two of the nation's largest
finance companies, expand their purchase of mortgages held by low- and moderate-income
homebuyers.
A reform that allowed Fannie and Freddie to receive affordable-housing credit for
buying private subprime mortgage-backed securities.
Increased loan ceilings and looser underwriting standards at the Federal Housing
Administration.
President Bill Clinton's National Homeownership Strategy, an unprecedented
private-public partnership that made financing more available and flexible.
Of all the initiatives endorsed by Cuomo, first as assistant HUD secretary and later as the
agency's top guy, none is as controversial as the affordable housing goals he imposed on
Fannie and Freddie with the blessing of the White House and Congress.
In reality, what those goals meant was to increase from 42 percent to 50 percent the
percentage of affordable housing loans Fannie and Freddie were required to buy each year.
Cuomo's HUD career under scrutiny - City & Region - The Buffalo News