Years ago, McCain and President Bush called on Congress to reign in Fannie and Freddie EVERY democrat voted NO.
Some Republicans were also against it. Bush did try to rein in Fannie, but that is only part of the problem. The bigger part was the derivatives instruments based on the bad loans. “Wall Street” thru hedge funds, permitted gambling on whether the loans would fail, by people other than those involved in the loans. That is why this part of the derivatives market is like 500 TRILLION DOLLARS. AIG went down because of ONE PERCENT of this amount, or about 500 Billion dollars.
Another post on FR tonite discusses problems Wells Fargo is uncovering trying to sort the derivatives end of it out of crap that bought from WaMu.
parsy, who says we should be afraid, very afraid