Housing Arsonist Clinton Now Portrayed As Heroic Firefighter

Investor's Business Daily ^ | September 7, 2012 | IBD Editorials

[No One Special]

History has rarely seen anything as surreal as former President Clinton riding into Charlotte as a hero rescuing America and President Obama from failed Republican economic policies.

Clinton was the architect of the financial crisis, yet he was able to use the Democratic National Convention to polish his phony credentials as economic genius.

He brazenly warned that GOP challengers Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would wreck the economy by going back to "the same old policies that got us in trouble in the first place."

"They want to cut taxes for high-income Americans even more than President Bush did. They want to get rid of those pesky financial regulations designed to prevent another crash and prohibit federal bailouts."

This may be Clinton's biggest whopper yet. Truth is, it was his own reckless housing policies that wrecked the economy.

Compared to his plan to nationalize the health care system, his housing policy seemed a small and rather innocuous plank in his domestic agenda, and few paid it much mind. But under his National Homeownership Strategy, Clinton took more than 100 executive actions to pry bank lending windows wide open.

First, using his executive order powers, he marshaled 10 federal agencies under the little-known Interagency Task Force on Fair Lending to enforce new "flexible" mortgage underwriting guidelines to combat "lending discrimination in any form."

For the first time, banks were ordered to qualify low-income minorities with spotty credit.

The 1994 policy planted the seeds of the mortgage crisis, as lenders abandoned prudent underwriting standards altogether.

The next year, Clinton set numerical targets for lending in predominantly minority census tracts under a revised Community Reinvestment Act, and added several hundred bank examiners to enforce the tougher CRA rules. Banks that failed had their expansion plans put on hold, a slow death sentence in...

[No One Special]

Great review of how Clinton created the housing bubble.

[A Navy Vet]

"But under his National Homeownership Strategy, Clinton took more than 100 executive actions to pry bank lending windows wide open. First, using his executive order powers, he marshaled 10 federal agencies under the little-known Interagency Task Force on Fair Lending to enforce new "flexible" mortgage underwriting guidelines to combat "lending discrimination in any form.

For the first time, banks were ordered to qualify low-income minorities with spotty credit. The 1994 policy planted the seeds of the mortgage crisis, as lenders abandoned prudent underwriting standards altogether."

That is it in a nutshell. Between Clinton and Dodd and Frank they set up the failure of the world. The greedy bankers with their bundled home loans are also to blame.

I recall the WBush administration trying to address it many times. But Dodd/Frank were in power. They thought all was good for the sake of minorities who couldn't afford even a down payment, much less the monthly mortgage. Again, feelings. Not commonsense. Those bastards should rot in hell for killing our economy, not to mention the World malaise we are now experiencing.

[DB]

The bundling of home loans was simply trying to make an impossible situation more palatable and spread the risk. Under the rules they were forced to play by, it seemed to make sense...

The Fed could have brought it all to an end before it got to epic global economy ruining proportions by raising interest rates but they did not. They're the ones that are supposed to be free of political pressure and wise in the ways of managing money.

They failed disastrously.

[1010RD]

The problem with the FED is that it is a political entity and not an economic one.

[driftless2]

Read Tom Sowell’s “The Housing Boom and Bust” which clearly details how government interference caused the financial trainwreck. And Clinton is the arsonist. It was under his admin that the fuel was spread and the fire lit. Pubbies deserve a certain amount of blame, but the Dems are responsible for about 80-90% of the blame.