Housing Mess Started With Bill Clinton In 1999

I never said Bush is to blame, I just think it's funny that some people keep tossing it back on Clinton. We've been on W's watch for 8 years now, and if you listen to some people 9/11 was Clinton's fault, the current economy crisis was his fault... I mean c'mon, it's just ridiculous.
So if Obama takes office everything is going to be his fault?

So if Obama takes office everything is going to be his fault?

Once Obama is in he'll get a free ride with me. It's all on 'W' for the next 8 years.

Once Obama is in he'll get a free ride with me. It's all on 'W' for the next 8 years.
Ok, I thought thats what you would say. LOL

I'm just kidding by the way. But in all seriousness, whoever the next President is will be inheriting quite the mess.

Dude, I feel sorry for whomever inherits this. Obama will be greatly constrained to implement his healthcare policy because of this bailout.

I never said Bush is to blame, I just think it's funny that some people keep tossing it back on Clinton. We've been on W's watch for 8 years now, and if you listen to some people 9/11 was Clinton's fault, the current economy crisis was his fault... I mean c'mon, it's just ridiculous.

I think it's funny that the overwhelming majority seems to think this is all Bush's fault...the media, the left wings, Obama, when it's not necessarily true. Like someone else said a little blame deserves to go to everyone. If anything Bush didn't stand up enough for his own belief that Fannie/Freddie were just too big and needed to be scaled back. Everyone fought him on it.

So, I guess I'm taking up for the misinformation and some of the piling on that Bush is taking right now.

Anyway First, as someone who worked in the mortgage industry I can tell you that the claims made in that article are idiotic and borderline racist. As tech stocks cooled and September 11th threatened to puncture what had been a roaring American economy, the FED reduced interest rates to encourage investment in real estate, which was already a hot market. Programs like ARMS which had existed for a while exploded in popularity as housing prices began to appreciate at 20 percent or more per year. With equity piling up in homes people began to borrow against the value of their properties, assuming the free ride would go on forever. While they were of course wrong, the reversal of the housing market would have been a contained crisis if it wasn't for the reckless investment of Wall Street firms in collaterilzed debt packages: fantastically profitable, Wall St. kept watching the money come in, assuming the housing market would not regress, as there was no historical precedence for this in America. They were wrong, and what should have been a limited crisis in the US housing market punctured the entire global economy.

This is a complicated thing. It is not any one person's fault. You could of course blame Bush's "Ownership Society" which created tax incentives for buying over renting, further accelerating investment in the over-heated housing market. You could certainly blame the commitment to deregulation which reduced oversights that might have prevented so much Wall St. capital getting tangled up in murky debt packages. But to say that the increased minority homeownership which occurred under Clinton, which removed the racist barriers that had prevented minorities from owning homes at a rate equal to whites for like hundreds of years, was anything other than a good thing, is complete fucking bullshit. Seriously, bullshit. Racist fucking bullshit. I am furious right now that you would post this crap and I want to hear you defend the claims made by your author - with evidence, not partisan sloganeering.

I think we can confidently blame the whole mess on just about anyone.

You can say that about so many things in our political world since the days of our founding fathers. But everyone needs someone to blame.

congress is mainly to blame, and freddie/fannie for paying off so many of the people that were supposed to be watching it (just like the oil lobbies). the introduction of mortgage liquidity (selling bad debt tracts) also turned it into a total monster.

clinton and mccain both tried to get more control over them i believe, but too many people were looking the other way.

there's plenty of blame to go around.

Anyway First, as someone who worked in the mortgage industry I can tell you that the claims made in that article are idiotic and borderline racist. As tech stocks cooled and September 11th threatened to puncture what had been a roaring American economy, the FED reduced interest rates to encourage investment in real estate, which was already a hot market. Programs like ARMS which had existed for a while exploded in popularity as housing prices began to appreciate at 20 percent or more per year. With equity piling up in homes people began to borrow against the value of their properties, assuming the free ride would go on forever. While they were of course wrong, the reversal of the housing market would have been a contained crisis if it wasn't for the reckless investment of Wall Street firms in collaterilzed debt packages: fantastically profitable, Wall St. kept watching the money come in, assuming the housing market would not regress, as there was no historical precedence for this in America. They were wrong, and what should have been a limited crisis in the US housing market punctured the entire global economy.

This is a complicated thing. It is not any one person's fault. You could of course blame Bush's "Ownership Society" which created tax incentives for buying over renting, further accelerating investment in the over-heated housing market. You could certainly blame the commitment to deregulation which reduced oversights that might have prevented so much Wall St. capital getting tangled up in murky debt packages. But to say that the increased minority homeownership which occurred under Clinton, which removed the racist barriers that had prevented minorities from owning homes at a rate equal to whites for like hundreds of years, was anything other than a good thing, is complete fucking bullshit. Seriously, bullshit. Racist fucking bullshit. I am furious right now that you would post this crap and I want to hear you defend the claims made by your author - with evidence, not partisan sloganeering.


perfect. I was going to say the exact same things... except include the bush administration cutting the capital gains tax combined with the practice of like-kind trading allowing the tax to be skirted by savvy investors accross the country.