Bill Clinton Helped Cause 2008 Financial Crisis

NewsBusters.org:

In the past 20 months, liberal media members have routinely blamed 2008's financial crisis on George W. Bush, Republicans, Wall Street, and greed.

Someone that has hardly ever been accused of having a hand in what led to the tumult is former President Bill Clinton.

As NewsBusters has been reporting almost since the crash began, it was Clinton who signed into law two key bills -- the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 -- that ushered in the malfeasance that almost toppled the world economy.

On Saturday, a former editorial page editor for the Wall Street Journal, George Melloan, made the connection even stronger as he pointed a finger at someone most in the media have shamelessly given a pass for his involvement in this crisis

To promote "affordable" housing, Bill Clinton had excused the two giant government-sponsored housing finance agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, from normal banking rules, allowing them leverage ratios far in excess of the limits on ordinary lenders. Banks were forced to write risky mortgage loans, a large number of which were then folded into mortgage-backed securities that Fannie, Freddie and others sold internationally with triple-A ratings.

This business seized up, crippling banks throughout the world, when holders began to realize that the assets that backed the securities, home mortgages, were going under water at an alarming rate.

Of course, Melloan was right. As the New York Times reported in September 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.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

They Blame Bush for everything wrong with the planet and get away with it because they most people are just too lazy to seek the truth.