Obama Administration Pushing Banks to Make Subprime Loans

Yes, this is really happening:

"The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place."

Skeptics? How about anyone with an ounce of common sense? If you wanted even more proof that government meddling caused the real estate bubble and near destruction of the financial system, look no further. The central planners never learn from the past because someone else always suffers the consequences for their arrogance and stupidity.

  " In response, administration officials say they are working to get banks to lend to a wider range of borrowers by taking advantage of taxpayer-backed programs — including those offered by the Federal Housing Administration — that insure home loans against default."

 That would be the same FHA that's essentially insolvent now that it has taken back and expanded its role as the insurer of loans no one else will touch. When Fannie and Freddie were buying loans to anyone who could fog a mirror, FHA had a lot less business. Meant originally for low income borrowers who could only afford small down payments, FHA now insures - largely at taxpayer risk - loans up to $730,000.

It's also important to note that with a few restrictions, FHA loans are fully assumable. You will never get that on a fully private loan, and with rates as low as they are now,  those fixed rate mortgages will have a lot of value when interest rates spike. And they're going to. Big time.
  

"The FHA, in coordination with the White House, is working to develop new policies to make clear to banks that they will not lose their guarantees or face other legal action if loans that conform to the program’s standards later default. Officials hope the FHA’s actions will then spur Fannie and Freddie to do the same.

The effort requires sign-on by the Justice Department and the inspector general of Department of Housing and Urban Development, agencies that investigate wrongdoing in mortgage lending."

Once burned, twice shy I suppose. Using a series of carrots and sticks, starting in the nineties and throughout the government induced bubble, banks were cajoled, intimidated and enticed to make, buy and sell loans given to objectively unqualified buyers. The pressure came from HUD, Fannie and Freddie, Congress, community groups (ACORN) and others, including the Department of Justice. The Jenet Reno DoJ threatened civil and criminal  prosecutions under civil rights law if lending standards didn't lead to the right amount of loans to the right kind of people.

So when the shit hit the fan and everything melted down in 2008 the lenders were vilified by the same people who mandated they make these toxic loans. I don't necessarily feel bad for them since they made out pretty good themselves. DoJ stopped short of criminal prosecution, most likely because the defendants would then have every reason to pull the covers on the whole thing and expose the rot under the public pronouncements.

Unlike the progressive central planners in Washington, the private sector does learn from the past and wants assurances - for what their worth- that they wont be subject to public opprobrium when this fails again. 

Fannie to U.S.: We need another $15.3 billion

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Battered by the housing crisis, mortgage finance company Fannie Mae said Friday that it needs another $15.3 billion in bailout money from the federal government.

Fannie Mae (FNM, Fortune 500), which is controlled by the government, reported a fourth-quarter loss of $16.3 billion, including $1.2 billion in dividend payments to the Treasury Department. This is down from $25.2 billion a year earlier and $19.8 billion in the third quarter.

Dividends? Since when does a company distribute profits when it loses money? It does when the Federal government owns it and wants to show phony returns on a losing investment. Then it turns around and gives Fannie more borrowed taxpayer money to alleviate losses partially caused by the dividend payments themselves.

Would this be a crime if a private company did this. Why, yes. Yes it would. This is like having a Ponzi scheme with one investor who has agreed to rip off himself.

A Mortgage Mess History Lesson

A New York Times article from ten years ago gives us some insight into the genesis of the government created mortgage mess that has brought the world's economy to its knees:

"In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits."

Remember, Fannie and Freddie were privately owned, Government controlled companies. That meant private profits with public risk. The moral hazard started there with politically motivated business decisions that risked other people's money.

"In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans."

Of course lenders were pressuring them. They were being coerced and intimidated by HUD, The Justice Dept., Congress, ACORN and others to underwrite loans that made no sense. There is an axiom in business: Risk is commensurate with reward. But the government wanted lenders to make high risk loans with low interest rates. Well, who's going to invest in that? Once Fannie and Freddie started buying this garbage, the green light was given to Wall Street investors to start buying it as well. And they did in a big way.

''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''

Ah, yes. Franklin Raines. The guy who made hundreds of millions while sinking his company on the taxpayer dime. Hey! Let's not have any standards at all! Or at least none that require any real effort to meet. This is like saying that the driver with ten speeding tickets and five accidents should pay the same insurance rates as the driver with a clean record. What do you think would happen? Why is anyone surprised now?

"In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's."

Gee! Ya think? This article was written ten years ago, mind you. Plenty of people were sounding the alarm, but were ignored or vilified. A lot were intimidated into silence lest they be labelled as heartless racists or worse if they questioned this insanity. Unfortunately, the laws of economics don't bend to accommodate self-reverential demagogues. Watch the video below for more of the historical record.

Big Problem: $300 Billion Not Spent

Barney Frank, one of the chief architects of the mortgage meltdown has miscalculated again in his attempt to stick taxpayers with an even bigger bill for his incompetence:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Back when $300 billion seemed like a lot of money, Rep. Barney Frank pushed through Congress one of the first attempts to rescue the U.S. housing market -- a program that has since fallen far short of its goals.

In July 2008, the Hope for Homeowners Act was approved amid promises it could help 400,000 distressed mortgage borrowers. That was months before the government's $700 billion bank bailout, or a possible $900 billion economic stimulus...

...But as of Monday, only 451 applications had been submitted to the FHA for participation in the program and only 25 loans had been closed under it, said an FHA spokesman."

Gee. Why would that be? Here's some of the basic requirements for participation:

"Hope for Homeowners maintains FHA's long-standing requirement that new loans be based on a family's long-term ability to repay the mortgage. FHA only allows owner-occupants to be eligible for FHA-insured mortgages. Borrowers must also meet the following eligibility criteria:

Their mortgage must have originated on or before January 1, 2008;

Their mortgage debt-to-income must be at least 31 percent;

They cannot afford their current loan;

They did not intentionally miss mortgage payments; and

They do not own second homes.

END

Well, the problem is obvious. The program is only available to responsible borrowers who can actually re-pay the new loans. All the unqualified mortgagors that Frank and his party forced banks to lend to can't compound this disaster by borrowing more money they can't afford.

Don't worry. Frank will figure out a way to waste the money. $300 billion buys a lot of votes.

Assigning Blame in All The Wrong Places

The journalists at USA today have reached their verdict on the financial meltdown and predictably place most of the blame on the private sector while ignoring the chronology of events.

None of this would have happened had the government not abused its monopoly on force when it began intimidating and threatening lenders into throwing all prudent lending standards out the window. That was the first the domino to fall. Everything after that was an effect of government meddling.

Barney Frank Whines: They Hate Me Because I'm Gay

Via Yid with a Lid we have another Democrat attempt to shut off speech with the bigotry card. This time it's Barney Frank trying to intimidate Mc'Cain criticisms with bogus charges of homophobia.

"Frank yesterday dismissed McCain's words as "an appeal to prejudice" that he said reminded him of past Republican efforts to raise voter concerns about the prospect of congressmen Charles Rangel and John Conyers, who are black, becoming committee chairs.

"I'm flattered by this," said Frank, who is gay. "But I don't think I'm
the single most important member of the House after Nancy Pelosi. There are also a lot of straight white men who are committee chairmen."Source Boston Globe,

No Barney, there's plenty of better reasons to criticise you. How about the fact that you're a moron, a crook and a tyrannical little shit. Actually, the only thing that disturbs me about your sexuality is thinking about what kind of guy would sleep with a fat, fugly douchebag like you.

Barney Just Can't Shut His Mouth

It's not enough that Barney Frank is guilty of criminal neglect and malfeasance in the near economic meltdown of the country. Now this shameless bastard is rubbing his hands over the prospect of taxing some more "rich" people; the definition of which gets lower and lower since there aren't enough truly rich people in the world to satisfy the appetites of power mad jerk-offs like Frank.

And just because I think it's funny, here's Lil O'Reilly's interview with Barney.

BTW - What's with you dumbasses in Massachusetts anyway? This is who you send to congress?

WAPO Defends Capitalism?

Imagine my surprise at seeing this in the Washington Post of all places:

...The deregulation of U.S. financial markets did not reflect only the narrow ideology of a particular party or administration. And the problem with the U.S. economy, more than lack of regulation, has been government's failure to control systemic risks that government itself helped to create. We are not witnessing a crisis of the free market but a crisis of distorted markets...More

Obama's Acorn BIG Player in Mortgage Mess

Stanley Kurtz is single handedly doing the job that the MSM wont. While they are up in Alaska rummaging through the trivialities of Sarah Palin's life, he's in Chicago uncovering real news. In his latest column, Kurtz shows that ACORN's thug tactics played a major role in the biggest financial crisis in generations:

"Up to now, conventional wisdom on the financial meltdown has relegated ACORN and the CRA to bit parts. The real problem, we’ve been told, lay with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In fact, however, ACORN is at the base of the whole mess. ACORN used CRA and Democratic sympathizers to entangle Fannie and Freddie and the entire financial system in a disastrous disregard of the most basic financial standards. And Barack Obama cut his teeth as an organizer and politician backing up ACORN’s economic madness every step of the way."

Video Primer of CRA and the Financial Mess

I guess these guys have resolved the copyright issues. So, at the risk of being called a racist by Congressional reprobate Barney Frank, I'm re-posting a video that even he can understand.

Frank: Criticising Congress is Also Racist

In an attempt to deflect attention from his own incompetence and corruption, Barney Frank is now hiding behind the race card:

“The bizarre notion that the Community Reinvestment Act . . . somehow is the cause of the whole problem, (conservatives) don’t mind that,” the lawmaker said. “They’re aware that the affordable-housing goals of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (and) the Community Reinvestment Act (aim to help) poor people. And let’s be honest, the fact that some poor people are black doesn’t hurt either from their standpoint.”

Ironically, Frank is using the same phony accusations of racism to defend himself that contributed to the problem in the first place. The CRA was used as a bludgeon to intimidate bankers with charges of racism corporately and personally if they didn't toe the line and lend to unqualified borrowers. Now that the house of cards has collapsed, it's also racist to point out the obvious.

I for one have reached my breaking point with this nonsense. For years Democrats have been ascribing vile racist (sexist, homophobic etc.) motives to anyone that dares to disagree with their policies. That childish, condescending and intellectually bankrupt tactic has now almost bankrupted the country. And it's still being used by the Obama campaign and his propagandists in the press.

It's a shame that more blacks are not outraged by the notion that they can't and shouldn't be held to the same standards as everyone else. Although it must be hard when racists like Frank are constantly telling you that all your problems are due to (imaginary) bigotry that only they can protect you from.

I don't and wont treat any adult like an infant just to spare myself from baseless and reprehensible charges of racism that only reveal a vacant argument.

Obama Disavows ACORN. Which Lie is True?

I'm taking bets on when Obama will tell us it's not the ACORN he knew. From Obama's Fight The Smears Site:

• Fact: Barack was never an ACORN community organizer.
• Fact: Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity.
• Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992.

But then we have this Feb 21st, 2008 post from Obama's own blog site:

When Obama met with ACORN leaders in November, he reminded them of his history with ACORN and his beginnings in Illinois as a Project Vote organizer, a nonprofit focused on voter rights and education. Senator Obama said, "I come out of a grassroots organizing background. That's what I did for three and half years before I went to law school. That's the reason I moved to Chicago was to organize. So this is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it. I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”

UPDATE: Sweetness & Light has a well documented post showing ACORN and Project Vote as being one and the same.

The Crucial Bailout?

The world was supposed to end last week when the bailout didn't pass. We're still here and the Senate passed a bill yesterday with another $100 billion in tax credits on top of the $700 billion already proposed. Apparently this bailout wasn't so important that it couldn't be passed without a lot of unrelated goodies. The fact is that there's plenty of credit still available. The only catch is that you have to be able to afford it.

Some examples of this bill's pork from the Tax Foundation:

Sec. 104. Energy credit for small wind property.
Sec. 105. Energy credit for geothermal heat pump systems.
Sec. 106. Credit for residential energy efficient property.
Sec. 205. Credit for new qualified plug-in electric drive motor vehicles.
Sec. 211. Transportation fringe benefit to bicycle commuters.
Sec. 308. Increase in limit on cover over of rum excise tax to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Sec. 309. Extension of economic development credit for American Samoa.
Sec. 325. Extension and modification of duty suspension on wool products; wool research fund; wool duty refunds.
Sec. 502. Provisions related to film and television productions.
Sec. 503. Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children.

And congress wonders why they have a single digit approval rating. They screwed us once by creating the problem and are trying to screw us again with their phony and destructive attempts to "fix" it. Fool me once...

Where We Are and How We Got Here

Reason Magazine has posted one of the better explanations of the credit mess. Well documented and well worth reading.

"Let's be clear: This is a Wall Street crisis, not a national economic crisis.
The overall economy, while a bit weak, is still growing. Some
politicians are comparing
the current environment to the Great Depression. But in 1932, when the federal
government last moved to bail out the banking
sector, economic output had fallen 45 percent and
unemployment was a staggering 24 percent. Today, economic output is actually
up and unemployment is a historically modest 6.1 percent. The overall economy
doesn't even face a liquidity crisis in the current turmoil. Consumer,
commercial/industrial, and real estate loans are all up over last
year. "

BFF's: Obama, ACORN and Alinsky

Here's a brief video of Stanley Kurtz expanding on his excellent expose' in The NY Post of Obama's ties to ACORN, the radical group that was undeniably a major contributor to the current financial meltdown. They and other groups like LaRaza bludgeoned lenders with the Community Reinvestment Act and bogus charges of racism in order to intimidate them into making loans to unqualified borrowers. All this was done with the tacit approval and support of Democrats using the threat of ruin by government force for those who didn't comply.

This potential collapse of the financial system has more to do with a larger strategy of the radical left than many realize. ACORN and Obama are both disciples of Saul Alinsky, the radical psychopath and godfather of civil agitation who also counted Hillary Clinton and other leftists as followers .

This breakdown and ACORN's involvement contains disturbing elements of the CLOWARD-PIVEN STRATEGY, which seeks to force "political change through orchestrated crisis.":

"Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judaeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one.

"This was an example of what are commonly called Trojan Horse movements -- mass movements whose outward purpose seems to be providing material help to the downtrodden, but whose real objective is to draft poor people into service as revolutionary foot soldiers; to mobilize poor people en masse to overwhelm government agencies with a flood of demands beyond the capacity of those agencies to meet. The flood of demands was calculated to break the budget, jam the bureaucratic gears into gridlock, and bring the system crashing down. Fear, turmoil, violence and economic collapse would accompany such a breakdown -- providing perfect conditions for fostering radical change."

Investors Business Daily has some good additional reading on this subject HERE and HERE and HERE. More also from The American Thinker.

Bankruptcy, Not Bailout

It's a given that when you have dug yourself into a hole, you should stop digging. The credit crisis was caused by government meddling in free markets for political purposes. The ensuing debacle now has that same government asking us to trust them to fix it.

Jeffrey A. Miron of Harvard University is calling for allowing the markets to work as they were meant to and getting rid of the perverse government inducements that created these disastrous distortions in the first place:

"This bailout was a terrible idea. Here's why.

The current mess would never have occurred in the absence of ill-conceived federal policies. The federal government chartered Fannie Mae in 1938 and Freddie Mac in 1970; these two mortgage lending institutions are at the center of the crisis. The government implicitly promised these institutions that it would make good on their debts, so Fannie and Freddie took on huge amounts of excessive risk.

Worse, beginning in 1977 and even more in the 1990s and the early part of this century, Congress pushed mortgage lenders and Fannie/Freddie to expand subprime lending. The industry was happy to oblige, given the implicit promise of federal backing, and subprime lending soared...

The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government.

The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company."

Bailout Fails. Pelosi Helps Sink It

The bailout failed. Good. Now maybe we can get a bill that gets the government that caused this the hell out of the way.

The ever incompetent Nancy Pelosi probably killed the bill with her stupid and laughably false remarks prior to the vote:

"Opponents said part of the reason for the opposition from Republicans was what they termed a partisan speech by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said one GOP source.
"Pelosi's partisan speech has caused our members to go berserk and may cost us any remaining chance to pass the bill," the source said.
Pelosi had said that Congress needed to pass the bill, even though it was an outgrowth of the "failed economic policies" of the last eight years."

Brilliant. This idiot couldn't even corral enough Democrats to pass a bill that didn't need ONE Republican vote to pass as ninety-four members of her party voted against it.

UPDATE: Video added of Pelosi's speech

How the hell does she walk with those big Brass Balls clanging around? It was unbridled capitalism? No, it was regulations that forced lenders to make crappy loans to begin with. It "snuck up on us"? What rock have you been living under?
Hell, I was talking about this potential problem to my students as far back as 2003. Are you saying I have better information than you do? OK. Bad example since it seems no useful information enters Nancy's brick thick head.

The Record Speaks for Itself

More damning video of Democrat incompetence, corruption, racial politics and intimidation.

Don't Blame Bush for This One

The White House has issued a timeline of its efforts to reign in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They were blocked or ignored until it was too late by a Democrat Party (and some cowardly Republicans) more interested in class warfare and racial politics than doing their job:


2001
April: The Administration's FY02 budget declares that the size of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is "a potential problem," because "financial trouble of a large GSE could cause strong repercussions in financial markets, affecting Federally insured entities and economic activity."

2002
May: The President calls for the disclosure and corporate governance principles contained in his 10-point plan for corporate responsibility to apply to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (OMB Prompt Letter to OFHEO, 5/29/02)

2003

January: Freddie Mac announces it has to restate financial results for the previous three years.

February: The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) releases a report explaining that "although investors perceive an implicit Federal guarantee of [GSE] obligations," "the government has provided no explicit legal backing for them." As a consequence, unexpected problems at a GSE could immediately spread into financial sectors beyond the housing market. ("Systemic Risk: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Role of OFHEO," OFHEO Report, 2/4/03)

September: Fannie Mae discloses SEC investigation and acknowledges OFHEO's review found earnings manipulations.

September: Treasury Secretary John Snow testifies before the House Financial Services Committee to recommend that Congress enact "legislation to create a new Federal agency to regulate and supervise the financial activities of our housing-related government sponsored enterprises" and set prudent and appropriate minimum capital adequacy requirements.

October: Fannie Mae discloses $1.2 billion accounting error.

November: Council of the Economic Advisers (CEA) Chairman Greg Mankiw explains that any "legislation to reform GSE regulation should empower the new regulator with sufficient strength and credibility to reduce systemic risk." To reduce the potential for systemic instability, the regulator would have "broad authority to set both risk-based and minimum capital standards" and "receivership powers necessary to wind down the affairs of a troubled GSE." (N. Gregory Mankiw, Remarks At The Conference Of State Bank Supervisors State Banking Summit And Leadership, 11/6/03)

2004

February: The President's FY05 Budget again highlights the risk posed by the explosive growth of the GSEs and their low levels of required capital, and called for creation of a new, world-class regulator: "The Administration has determined that the safety and soundness regulators of the housing GSEs lack sufficient power and stature to meet their responsibilities, and therefore…should be replaced with a new strengthened regulator." (2005 Budget Analytic Perspectives, pg. 83)

February: CEA Chairman Mankiw cautions Congress to "not take [the financial market's] strength for granted." Again, the call from the Administration was to reduce this risk by "ensuring that the housing GSEs are overseen by an effective regulator." (N. Gregory Mankiw, Op-Ed, "Keeping Fannie And Freddie's House In Order," Financial Times, 2/24/04)
June: Deputy Secretary of Treasury Samuel Bodman spotlights the risk posed by the GSEs and called for reform, saying "We do not have a world-class system of supervision of the housing government sponsored enterprises (GSEs), even though the importance of the housing financial system that the GSEs serve demands the best in supervision to ensure the long-term vitality of that system. Therefore, the Administration has called for a new, first class, regulatory supervisor for the three housing GSEs: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banking System." (Samuel Bodman, House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Testimony, 6/16/04)

2005: April: Treasury Secretary John Snow repeats his call for GSE reform, saying "Events that have transpired since I testified before this Committee in 2003 reinforce concerns over the systemic risks posed by the GSEs and further highlight the need for real GSE reform to ensure that our housing finance system remains a strong and vibrant source of funding for expanding homeownership opportunities in America… Half-measures will only exacerbate the risks to our financial system." (Secretary John W. Snow, "Testimony Before The U.S. House Financial Services Committee," 4/13/05)

2007

July: Two Bear Stearns hedge funds invested in mortgage securities collapse.

August: President Bush emphatically calls on Congress to pass a reform package for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying "first things first when it comes to those two institutions. Congress needs to get them reformed, get them streamlined, get them focused, and then I will consider other options." (President George W. Bush, Press Conference, The White House, 8/9/07)

September: RealtyTrac announces foreclosure filings up 243,000 in August – up 115 percent from the year before.

September: Single-family existing home sales decreases 7.5 percent from the previous month – the lowest level in nine years. Median sale price of existing homes fell six percent from the year before.

December: President Bush again warns Congress of the need to pass legislation reforming GSEs, saying "These institutions provide liquidity in the mortgage market that benefits millions of homeowners, and it is vital they operate safely and operate soundly. So I've called on Congress to pass legislation that strengthens independent regulation of the GSEs – and ensures they focus on their important housing mission. The GSE reform bill passed by the House earlier this year is a good start. But the Senate has not acted. And the United States Senate needs to pass this legislation soon." (President George W. Bush, Discusses Housing, The White House, 12/6/07)


2008
January: Bank of America announces it will buy Countrywide.

January: Citigroup announces mortgage portfolio lost $18.1 billion in value.

February: Assistant Secretary David Nason reiterates the urgency of reforms, says "A new regulatory structure for the housing GSEs is essential if these entities are to continue to perform their public mission successfully." (David Nason, Testimony On Reforming GSE Regulation, Senate Committee On Banking, Housing And Urban Affairs, 2/7/08)

March: Bear Stearns announces it will sell itself to JPMorgan Chase.

March: President Bush calls on Congress to take action and "move forward with reforms on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They need to continue to modernize the FHA, as well as allow State housing agencies to issue tax-free bonds to homeowners to refinance their mortgages." (President George W. Bush, Remarks To The Economic Club Of New York, New York, NY, 3/14/08)

April: President Bush urges Congress to pass the much needed legislation and "modernize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. [There are] constructive things Congress can do that will encourage the housing market to correct quickly by … helping people stay in their homes." (President George W. Bush, Meeting With Cabinet, the White House, 4/14/08)

May: President Bush issues several pleas to Congress to pass legislation reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the situation deteriorates further.

** "Americans are concerned about making their mortgage payments and keeping their homes. Yet Congress has failed to pass legislation I have repeatedly requested to modernize the Federal Housing Administration that will help more families stay in their homes, reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to ensure they focus on their housing mission, and allow State housing agencies to issue tax-free bonds to refinance sub-prime loans." (President George W. Bush, Radio Address, 5/3/08)

** "[T]he government ought to be helping creditworthy people stay in their homes. And one way we can do that – and Congress is making progress on this – is the reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That reform will come with a strong, independent regulator." (President George W. Bush, Meeting With The Secretary Of The Treasury, the White House, 5/19/08)

** "Congress needs to pass legislation to modernize the Federal Housing Administration, reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to ensure they focus on their housing mission, and allow State housing agencies to issue tax-free bonds to refinance subprime loans." (President George W. Bush, Radio Address, 5/31/08)

June: As foreclosure rates continued to rise in the first quarter, the President once again asks Congress to take the necessary measures to address this challenge, saying "we need to pass legislation to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac." (President George W. Bush, Remarks At Swearing In Ceremony For Secretary Of Housing And Urban Development, Washington, D.C., 6/6/08)

July: Congress heeds the President's call for action and passes reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as it becomes clear that the institutions are failing.

Democrat Fiddling While Money Burned

Fox News has put together a timeline that shows us who saw the financial meltdown and tried to do something about it. It also shows us who stood in the way.

If Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer et al had any shame, they would resign immediately. Instead they're asking us to trust them to fix a disaster they created and refused to recognize until it was too late.

At the very least they should get out of the way and just vote yes on whatever plan the responsible, competent adults decide is best to clean up their mess.