The report argues that lowered lending standards were the cause of the housing crisis and did not exempt the Republicans or the Bush administration from blame. It said placing certain lending quotas for under-served populations allowed “both Democratic and Republican administrations to consistently make campaign promises to boost homeownership through government intervention in the market.

Consequently, under both the Clinton and Bush administrations, HUD dramatically increased these quotas, which reached their zenith when the Bush administration raised them to 56 percent, 27 percent and 39 percent, respectively.”

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/ar...rcID=50680

The link below lists the committe members:
http://oversight.house.gov/about/members.asp

Fannie/Freddie were major problems in the crisis, however even if Fannie/Freddie did NOT get stupid and corrupt like they did (no indictments how sweet) we would still be in a economic meltdown. The Federal Reserve, the bankers and Big government increased money supply, lowered bank margin requirements, allowed derivatives off exchanges, eliminated Glass -Stegal and failed to regulate as prescribed. The regulators..... what a waste of time..... the Madoff story says it all... they were alerted -3- times over a -10- year period and failed to act. Regulators are bureaucrats, they are there for the benefits and do not work as well as when mandated and they can not be fired.

This bureaucratic crap will be forced on the American people in an even more direct and personal manner if the Dems get their "Health Care" passed.

The Ponzi schemes were only noticed because the market fell out. If people were still investing you wouldn't have heard about a lot of these guys. When people started pulling money out, that's when a Ponzi scheme is in trouble. Bermie Madoff was caught up b/c of the recession, but people like him did not cause it.

The culture of spending money that American's don't have is what caused this recession. The insane housing boom, the deregulation of the commodities markets that led to oil shooting through the roof, the lowering of taxes while at the same going to war, creating a market where people who had no business owning a home were given adjustable rate mortgages that they didn't understand, these are the types of things that led to the recession.

Just a lot of things that if they happened one at a time, it probably doesn't kill the economy, but they all came to a head at once, and this is where we're at. Clearly the government should have been more involved in the regulating of commodities and housing mortgages, but it's hard to get elected if your campaigning to increase government when we're in the midst of a surplus. If voters had a better understanding of the issues, or were more willing to listen to the entire story instead of a soundbite about someone raising or lowering taxes, or making it easier to buy a home than maybe politicians would have been better able to create change.

It's very hard as a politician to say we want to do a better job of regulating the housing market, and then for the next week all you would hear on CNN or Fox News is 15 second soundbites about how such and such politician wants to make it harder for you to buy a house. I just don't think that would have gone over well. We created a system that makes it very hard for politicians to make the best decisions for the good of the long term sometimes.

You see that in the government ponzi schemes. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and State Pensions are just big ponzi schemes. They are guarenteeing $$ that the will never, ever be able to collect in upcoming years. Eventually, these "safety nets" will run out of money and crash.

Next will be socialized medicine.

You lower taxes while starting a war.. and yes you can't fund your programs anymore. It was a bad last decade, and we're going to be paying for it for a while.

(07-09-2009 02:20 PM)HuskieFan84 Wrote:  You lower taxes while starting a war.. and yes you can't fund your programs anymore. It was a bad last decade, and we're going to be paying for it for a while.

It was bad and getting much worse. Our government has zero fiscal responsibility. They just spend, spend, spend money they don't have.(both REPUBLICANS and Democrats). Eventually, we won't be able to fund because all of our money will be going to pay interest on the national debt.

(07-09-2009 02:20 PM)HuskieFan84 Wrote:  You lower taxes while starting a war.. and yes you can't fund your programs anymore. It was a bad last decade, and we're going to be paying for it for a while.

Those programs were insolvent before income taxes were lowered. SS and Medicare have their own payroll tax that were not cut. And, that isn't enough to fund them.

Before it is automatically assumed that more regulation (of anything) is the answer, more time should be spent analyzing the problems. Why is it the job of the government to regulate mortgages? Is it to save people from making personal decisions that are bad? Is it to prop up the whole economy? Perhaps it is better to let the economy correct itself without government intervention. Every time there is government intervention to save something, it is harder to stop the next intervention. And, there is little indication that many interventions are actually postive in the long term.

We should strive to help the helpless, but not the clueless.