Yup - Bush shares a lot of blame. Not to mention fannie and freddie were losing market share in that time. Everyone was doing it including agencies that weren’t required to at all.
“Not to mention fannie and freddie were losing market share in that time. “
That’s something that most people don’t know. They think that the subprime mortgages cranked out during the bubble were done by F&F when in fact the majority were done by their private sector rivals.
F&F lost market share because they were dealing in low-yield conforming paper even when it was subprime. And that isn’t what investors wanted. They were looking for high yield paper, and the private lenders gave it to them in spades. The NINJA, Option Arm, Alt-A exotic non-conforming paper gave them the high yield paper that they wanted. Of course it also gave them time bombs in the form of CDOs but that’s not what they expected.