Pressured to take more risk, Fannie hit a tipping point

The New York Times ^ | Oct 5, 2008 | Charles Duhigg

[pennboricua]

A decision, made under pressure from Congress and investors, to steer Fannie Mae into dangerous corners of the mortgage market proved to be disastrous.

[AIC]

It appears there were no risks too great.

[bobsunshine]

Don't understand why the MSM is now reporting this? Well, I was reading over the transcript from the VP debate and I thought I heard Biden say something that was off. Well here it is:

No one making less than $250,000 under Barack Obama’s plan will see one single penny of their tax raised whether it's their capital gains tax, their income tax, investment tax, any tax. And 95 percent of the people in the United States of America making less than $150,000 will get a tax break.

. (emphasis mine)I think "say it ain't so Joe" said this to now give cover to Obama when he starts to change his tax plan closer to the election. I don't think it was a gaffe since no one included this in the 14 or so mistakes he made.

[Yardstick]

Also the article tries to paint it as Freddy/Fannie being pressured equally to buy risky loans by both the Congress AND Wall Street. The proof? Mean phone calls from Wall Street types and a meeting where Mozilo told Mudd Freddy/Fannie would become irrelevant if it didn’t. Meanwhile the Democrats were “demanding” the same thing. The question is which is more persuasive — words spoken by Wall Street or demands issued by Democrats, the latter being backed up by the power to investigate and harass.

[neverdem]

bttt

[GOPJ]

...if greed could be satisfied by lending to this segment of the population, why would HUD have to force banks to write the business??

Because the "greed" wasn't in the banks...

Follow the money...