Meltdown Blame: Under Clinton, Welfare Qualified As Income For Loans

I guess you could call this, "Who's To Blame: Part IV".

The other parts are:

THE CREDIT MELTDOWN: Who Is To Blame?

and

We Really Can Put Most of the Blame On The Dems

and

Dems Dissemble Today, Yesterday They Fought For Fannie


Now, Ann Coulter weighs in with an astonishing claim:

"Threatening lawsuits, Clinton's Federal Reserve demanded that banks treat welfare payments and unemployment benefits as valid income sources to qualify for a mortgage. That isn't a joke -- it's a fact."

Remember, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - created to make mortgage markets more liquid - were proved in a government study to not really lower interest rates at all. So what then is their reason for existence? Democrats increasingly claimed "affordable housing".

More Quotes from Ann:

...the Los Angeles Times reported that, starting in 1992, a majority-Democratic Congress "mandated that Fannie and Freddie increase their purchases of mortgages for low-income and medium-income borrowers.

Under Clinton, the entire federal government put massive pressure on banks to grant more mortgages to the poor and minorities. Clinton's secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Andrew Cuomo, investigated Fannie Mae for racial discrimination and proposed that 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low- to moderate-income borrowers by the year 2001.

In 1999, liberals were bragging about extending affirmative action to the financial sector. Los Angeles Times reporter Ron Brownstein hailed the Clinton administration's affirmative action lending policies as one of the "hidden success stories" of the Clinton administration...

In Bush's first year in office, the White House chief economist, N. Gregory Mankiw, warned that the government's "implicit subsidy" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, combined with loans to unqualified borrowers, was creating a huge risk for the entire financial system.

Rep. Barney Frank denounced Mankiw, saying he had no "concern about housing." How dare you oppose suicidal loans to people who can't repay them! The New York Times reported that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were "under heavy assault by the Republicans," but these entities still had "important political allies" in the Democrats.

Now, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, middle-class taxpayers are going to be forced to bail out the Democrats' two most important constituent groups: rich Wall Street bankers and welfare recipients.

More P. Diddy Reality at The Pantheon Journal.

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