Originally Posted by
chuck416
Buzz, Phantom, you guys forgot about Barney Frank, and Chuck Schumer, who legislated that Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac MUST make those loans (to unqualified borrowers). Or, as Chuck Schumer put it so well "...otherwise, how will people who can't afford a home ever afford one...". There is the real 'poster child' candidates of the whole credit default swap debacle. Sure, Goldman Sachs has a great degree of culpability, but with those CDOs "selling at such a premium", they just couldn't help themselves. Plenty of greed to assign, all the way around...
I may be mistaken, but wasn't it under Clinton that Frank and Dodd drafted legislation requiring banks to make loans to people that the banks knew couldn't afford them. If the banks didn't make the loans, the banks couldn't get the federal approvals to expand.