It Was Bankers On Wall Street With CDSs
McClatchy is trying to fight against the ignorance: Private sector loans, not Fannie or Freddie, triggered crisis
WASHINGTON — As the economy worsens and Election Day approaches, a conservative campaign that blames the global financial crisis on a government push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans has taken off on talk radio and e-mail.
Commentators say that’s what triggered the stock market meltdown and the freeze on credit. They’ve specifically targeted the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the federal government seized on Sept. 6, contending that lending to poor and minority Americans caused Fannie’s and Freddie’s financial problems.
Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren’t true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis.
Jeff Greene, the billionaire running against Kendrick Meek for the Democratic nomination for Senate, is pushing the Fannie/Freddie fairy tale, to avoid his personal responsibility for the meltdown as a major player in the Credit Default Swap scam.
It is the standard conservative agitprop – everything is the fault of the government and poor people, and the rich are the victims.
1 comment
“Fannie Mae, the mortgage-finance company operating under federal conservatorship”
If you indicate that you don’t know what Fannie Mae is, and does by statements like that, it is obvious that nothing you say has any weight at all.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are public/private institutions that provide particular services to facilitate the mortgage market in the United States. That the author of the article has made clear a total lack of familiarity with what they are and what they do, nothing written is worth my time.
People who actually know what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are and do are cognizant that they have problems as a result of the collapse of the housing bubble, but they didn’t cause the problems; they are “collateral damage”.
So you know, neither originates mortgages.