BTW, the original blog stating that deregulation had nothing to do with the crisis and that the cra is to blame is all false.
Phil Gramm got swaps unregulated in 2000. It was slipped into the spending bill in December of that year without being debated.
Loans associated with the cra were conforming loans. These are not subprime loan products. The default rate on these cra associated loans is below 9%. Well over 80% of the risky subprime products were made by entities not associated with the cra.
The majority of risky subprime products were all developed in the 2000's.

Bush did have his home ownership challenge.
Yes Clinton did too, but Clinton's goal was to raise the overall home ownership rate. Clinton raised the rate to a high , but sustainable level. Bush took it to a un-sustainable level and focused on minorities. His goal was 5.5 million new minority home owners and then raise it to 7 million after it became so successful. He got the American Dream down payment law passed to help them. He tried to get zero down payments too. He called on the private sector ( chase, countrywide, ameriquest and others) several times to meet his goals. While calling for gse reform, Bush raised their quotas and removed risky loans restrictions (subprime products) on them on 2004. Until then, the gses were barely involved in subprime products. Bit of a hypocrite, huh?

Funny thing, Bush's friend, ameriquest's founder Arnall ,was one of the first sub prime product and predatory lenders. Bush thanked this guy for helping him by making him an US ambassador.

All of this was to promote his agenda and revive/promote the economy which was in a recession when he took office. His narrow focus and irresponsibility created the housing bubble. Chasing short term, unsustainable gains to revive the economy has cost this country dearly and a very big part of the blame falls on Bush.

Well, why weren't our great Mr. Frank and Mr Dodd raising concerns over this. Maybe Mr. frank was too busy with his personal relationship with the head of Freddy Mac. He was "literally" in bed with the guy. Talk about a conflict of interest.

According to larry…banks were "forced" to take on risky loans. In this fantasy, banks had no other choice but to sell bets on mortgage derivatives because they were being "forced" to sell risky loans.

Pure fantasy.

The truth is that deregulated banks invented exciting new "products" to gamble on. The banks did this in order to fill their coffers with easy money. And then the giant poker game got out of hand…..and blew up in their faces. Wall Street banks produce nothing of value to America. Yeah, that's what I said.

Conservatives, whose only interest is in defending deregulated money shufflers, money schemers, and the free gambling market……defend these highly paid, Serious Professionals….even when they destroy the entire American economy. Conservatives hate the government….but they love the crooks in the private sector. Odd.

Canada saw it and stopped it, Bush tried to cover himself by making a blurb once in a speech.

Bush had the power to stop this real estate crash but he didn't.

I believe he was too dumb to see the crash or greedy?

Bush passed everything he wanted. They made a feeble attempt to rein it in and then quickly gave up saying "ownership is great!" go for it.

Bush could give a rats arse what Barney Frank said, he laughed at Barney Frank.

He was the president, he was the man in charge.

I love how hard core republicans can simply pass off responsibility. They talk about how a person should be responsible for his own mess and then they simply look for Bush's scapegoats and start pointing fingers elsewhere.

They lie to themselves, this is Bush's fault we are in this huge debt. He could have easily reigned this in but he didn't.

Then Clinton and the Dems pushed for more home ownership. But it didn't really take off until Bush's administration and the non-belief in Gov't oversight. Unwatched capitalism. The Clinton push to more ownership could be responsible for the subprime mtg problem.

And the Bush adm could be responsible for the much larger mtg problem. Walstreet is the real blame and no one else.

Walstreet got congress to change the laws allowing mtgs to become financial instruments. Walstreet facilitated the buying and selling of these products. I won't go into detail for it would be a short book.

Did someone pee in your Wheaties or something ?

Maybe you should take another month off.

Rev, was Bush actually responsible for all those things? How did he find time to deal with all that along with the war in Iraq, the terrorists constantly plotting to destroy something else big in the US and all the crap that people like you continually put out. I don't think that even your hero, Bubba Clinton could have done all that, even in 8 years. Most, if not all, those things must have been done before Bush came along. Yep, I think they were.

But I'm shocked a black academic would play that failed old race card on PBS.

Read Emma Jordan's second paragraph!

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10032008/transcript2.html

[excerpt]
LARRY KUDLOW (tape):It's time for the Congress, Republicans and Democrats, to stop encouraging, exhorting, and forcing banks to make low income loans with no documentation. Stop that. The community reinvestment act which was passed in the mid nineties, which was extended in the early 2000s, literally pushed these lenders to make low income loans.

BILL MOYERS:Lending to minorities and risky people. Do you see this, are they seeing this as issues of race and class?

EMMA COLEMAN JORDAN:Absolutely. And it's a cynical manipulation. It's reprehensible. And, in the worse tradition of Lee Atwater, and the-

BILL MOYERS:Lee Atwater.

EMMA COLEMAN JORDAN:-Willie Horton ad, to use race as a wedge issue to make people who pay their mortgages believe that the people who are getting the benefit of the 700 billion dollars, that we're being asked to pay, are poor, minority people who caused the crisis.

This is unconscionable. This problem is not a problem that was caused by the Community Reinvestment Act. The data is very clear that the Community Reinvestment Act loans were being offered in a way to people that were much more responsible and had none of the characteristics of default that are being attributed in this discussion. And what this does is to say, this problem is a problem that was caused by black people.

And it means that it gives an opportunity to bring up that old wedge. But I think the people in the country are smarter today. I just don't think it's going to fly. I think that people understand that the enemy is not a person who got a home loan and was tricked into getting that loan by a fast-talking broker who originated the loan but that the problem was the securitization process, the high leveraging that Wall Street was doing, the lack of regulation.
[/excerpt]

Btw, the Clinton update was originally proposed by some Republicans, so you should get on board with criticizing it. It's not like you to miss an opportunity to blame the GOP for something. You don't need to deny reality in this area.

"ARM's, interest only loans, sub-prime loans, no money down speculative loans, no appraisal loans, no income verification loans, bundling mortgages as securities, trading (gambling) those securities, creating and selling non-regulated "credit default swaps" as insurance for those securities that no one knew the value of, radically high leverage gambling on Wall Street…..and on and on. That's what caused the crisis. None of it has been corrected. None of it."

I agree with pretty much all of that, but then you deny the very reason all those things came into existence (almost all prior to Bush, btw), along with the reason that none of it has been corrected – because to reverse them would severely LIMIT MORTGAGE LOANS TO THOSE WITH LOW INCOMES, which nearly all Democrats and many Republicans see as non-PC. You're looking at the effect without examining the cause. Put another way, increasing home ownership among the poor is the forest. Those practices you cited are the trees. It takes a willful act of denial not to acknowledge that.

I'd like regulation over both the financial and environmental areas in general, but we have to insure the regulations don't cause more problems than they prevent. When it comes to finances, there are certain regulations that make sense, like reserve requirements, and there are others that wouldn't. I wouldn't want the federal government to mandate how much money people in private industry can make, for instance. That's none of the government's business.

The arch-conservative supply side deregulation Oracle, himself, said he made a terrible mistake in judgment in believing that financial professionals could be trusted to do the right thing.

You want to argue that Greenspan was wrong about that statement?

Tunnel-visioned economic conservatives simply jettison any truth about what actually created the crisis.

You are wrong….Freddy and Fannie, as all conservative experts agree, played a part, but didn't create the crisis. The Community Reinvestment Act diversion is even more dishonest. And while there are thousands of regulations in place, radical extremists like Bush-Cheney made sure through employment choices that nothing much was actually regulated …..as any sentient being can see for themselves with the SEC.

No, Bush isn't totally responsible…..he's just the last conservative economic nut who was left guarding the economy by permitting an environment of greed-gone-wild and scout's honor professionals to recklessly gamble it all away.

ARM's, interest only loans, sub-prime loans, no money down speculative loans, no appraisal loans, no income verification loans, bundling mortgages as securities, trading (gambling) those securities, creating and selling non-regulated "credit default swaps" as insurance for those securities that no one knew the value of, radically high leverage gambling on Wall Street…..and on and on. That's what caused the crisis. None of it has been corrected. None of it.

Now put some clothes back on and blog the truth…will ya'?