http://query.nytimes.com/…

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending

By STEVEN A. HOLMES

Published: September 30, 1999

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.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets — including the New York metropolitan region — will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

…

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.

”From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.

The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the credit-worthiness of credit applicants.

It was obvious to just about everyone… yet Democrats in particular… the likes of Dodd, Clinton, Schumer, Reid, Obama, etc. endorsed and in several cases explicitly benefited from the Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The CRA was not the only or even the most important aspect which lead to the current crisis. Bad lending couldn’t have been sustained or would have been possible if not for the Federal Reserves incredibly low interest rates and market manipulation. The CRA was the vehicle which the rode the low interest wave to creating the boom.

http://www.bloomberg.com/…

AIG dropped 34 percent to $2.54 by 1:26 p.m. in Germany, after falling 80 percent in the past week in New York on concern the company would go bankrupt. The seizure in credit markets and more than $500 billion of losses related to subprime mortgages forced the government to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which control about half of America’s $12 trillion in home loans, and drove Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. out of business.

“I am floored,” said former Treasury counsel Peter Wallison in an interview. “No one could have possibly imagined this a few months ago. I can’t imagine why the Fed would do this unless they were sure AIG’s failure posed systemic risk.”

No one? Not a single person? Really, Mr. Wallison? I’m pretty sure the Austrians were. I’m pretty sure I recall Ron Paul talking about the bad things coming at presidential debates, TV interviews and written works.

UPDATE:

Here is one on Fannie and Freddie from 2003:

Ironically, by transferring the risk of a widespread mortgage default, the government increases the likelihood of a painful crash in the housing market. This is because the special privileges granted to Fannie and Freddie have distorted the housing market by allowing them to attract capital they could not attract under pure market conditions. As a result, capital is diverted from its most productive use into housing. This reduces the efficacy of the entire market and thus reduces the standard of living of all Americans.

Despite the long-term damage to the economy inflicted by the government’s interference in the housing market, the government’s policy of diverting capital to other uses creates a short-term boom in housing. Like all artificially-created bubbles, the boom in housing prices cannot last forever. When housing prices fall, homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out. Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss. These losses will be greater than they would have otherwise been had government policy not actively encouraged over-investment in housing.

Perhaps the Federal Reserve can stave off the day of reckoning by purchasing GSE debt and pumping liquidity into the housing market, but this cannot hold off the inevitable drop in the housing market forever. In fact, postponing the necessary, but painful market corrections will only deepen the inevitable fall. The more people invested in the market, the greater the effects across the economy when the bubble bursts.

http://www.usatoday.com/…

Some homeowners with risky “subprime” adjustable-rate mortgages will be able to refinance before they lose their home to foreclosure, with the help of steps President Bush will announce Friday, senior administration officials said Thursday night.

An estimated 80,000 homeowners with bruised credit and subprime ARMs they can no longer afford will be able to refinance loans, which the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) would insure.

The move marks a historic expansion of the role of the FHA, a Depression-era agency that has traditionally served low- and moderate-income families and first-time buyers, but not delinquent borrowers. Nearly 16% of subprime borrowers are behind on their ARMs, and an estimated 2 million subprime ARMs totaling about $600 billion will reset to higher rates through the end of next year.

The senior officials avoided using the word “bailout,” but the plan is sure to incite critics.

“If you’re going to help someone to refinance, you’re going to bail out the person who financed him in the first place,” Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute said Thursday night. “This will only cause the problem to arise again.”

Wallison said the lenders who provided the financing in many of these cases likely knew that the borrowers couldn’t meet the financial obligations of the loan.

“If we’re going to allow (lenders) to be refinanced out, what we’re doing is saving them from their own greed. … It might be good politics, but it’s very bad policy.”

In another bold step, Bush will propose a temporary change in tax law. It would let homeowners avoid taxes on forgiven debt if a lender agrees to alter the terms of a loan.

All investments, all actions contain risk. How do you justify the federal government and Federal Reserve bailing out both those who make the risky investments? If I invested in SCO years ago would the government back me up because of my poor choices? Of course they won’t. But it seems that if some large mortgage companies and investment firms make bad investments the government will. And it only makes things worse. The large private firms will only take larger risks if they have less true risk because they know the government will bail them out when the shit hits the fan as it did a few weeks ago. The public primarily pays for these bail outs through our taxes and we also pay through the drop in the market in our 401K’s and other investments. The investors should be completely responsible for their investments. If they screw up and the market goes apeshit then it goes apeshit. That’s just how it goes.