Kenneth R. Harney, Reality Times, June 24, 2002
When President Bush announced his Minority Homeownership plans last week in Atlanta, his top priorities were new federal programs: a $2.4 billion tax credit to facilitate home purchases by lower-income first-time buyers, and a $200 million national downpayment grant fund.
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Instead, most of the heavy lifting was assigned to two mortgage market players that have sometimes come under fire from Bush administration officials and Congressional Republicans: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
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Both corporations also announced specific plans to increase home purchases by African-Americans, Hispanics and immigrants. Fannie Mae, for example, pledged to create an entirely new mortgage product “designed to meet the unique needs of New Americans.” The new loan concept would include underwriting changes that remove some of the common barriers immigrants encounter here—denial of credit because of inadequate or short credit histories, reliance on communal funds for downpayment money, and language and cultural issues. Fannie also promised to establish 100 “outreach partnerships” with predominantly-minority churches, mosques and “other faith-based institutions” to fund mortgages for their congregations.
Besides its $180 billion mortgage purchase commitment, Freddie Mac gave President Bush a promise to implement a 25-point program aimed at increasing minority homeownership. Some of the points were cutting-edge. For example, as part of an effort to remove the fear of financial loss from first-time minority home buyers, Freddie committed itself to “explor(e) the viability of equity assurance products to protect home values in economically distressed areas.”
Pressed for details on “equity assurance” by RealtyTimes, Freddie Mac vice president Craig S. Nickerson said the idea is still at an embryonic stage, but might involve limited guarantees or insurance coverage to protect buyers from the possibility of loss of their initial equity stakes should property values in their neighborhoods decline.
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Original article
(Posted on November 25, 2008)
Comments
Yes. And meanwhile the liberals, the media, and our politicians keep insisting that our government did NOT force banks and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make irresponsible loans to irresponsible “African Americans, Hispanics and immigrants,” and that this played NO role in the Sub-Prime Housing Crisis. In fact, it it is no longer even referred to as the “Sub-prime lending crisis,” because that would suggest that making massive loans to unemployed minorities and illegal immigrants was a bad idea. Instead the blame has shifted to those evil “wealthy financial organizations” who tried to “profit” from tricking Minorities and immigrants into entering into mortgages way beyond their means, and which the poor darlings did not understand. LIES, LIES, LIES! If you still think that Diversity is our Greatest Strength, check the value of your 401K.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results each time.
Bush single-handedly was the cause for the Republicans being nearly destroyed as a party by his complictness in the sub-prime market, starting an unjust war that should have never been, by fanatically attempting to get an amnesty bill passed in order to give citizenship to illegals who are overburdening our country with heavy costs in every conceivable sector of the economy, plus driving down wages, then he sets his sights on a war with Iran that could well cause WWIII. Is it any wonder his approval rating is the lowest in history and the Republicans have been replaced by people voters KNOW are going to further harm the country?
Bush was so terrible the voters never even elected enough Republicans in Congress to be able to offset this coming radical leftist agenda being prepared against us right now.
So if this mentally challenged man is now shown to have responsibility in the sub-prime crash, it’s no surprise to those of us who shuddered each time he appeared on T.V. to announce another program of his.
His advisors, like Karl Rove and the neo-cons, were the worst in history, but it was Bush himself who bought into everything they told him, so ultimately the responsibility for such gross incompetence lands squarely on his shoulders.
Well…what can you say? That pretty much explains it all. Interestingly, it was around 2002 that the Neoconmen and Talk Radio loudmouths were praising Bush as one of the greatest Presidents America ever had. It is remarkable that anyone still listens to any of these idiots!
This approach hasn’t worked the whole 9 years it has been underway. I know! Let’s do it some more!
7:17 PM has hit the nail on the head in the post above. Those bad mortgage loans were repackaged as “tranches” and sold to investment firms all over the world. If your 401(k) plan has money invested in any mortgages accounts, you have personally taken a financial hit.
I was smart, and cashed out the “bonds & mortgages” account in my 401(k) two years ago, once the housing bubble started to collapse. I took a 10% tax hit, but still lost less money than I would have if I’d let it ride.
My question to the dopes who wrote this plan up is with the financial community aware of precisely what the problem is, how do they think these non-performing minority home-loans can be resold? Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac will simply be stuck holding the loans.
It is sad that the neo-cons probably still don’t have any idea how much they hurt the GOP’s chances in this election.
Sure, there were plenty of white liberals who drank the “white guilt” Kool-Aid and voted for Obama. However, I know folks of a less-liberal mind-set who voted for GWB the first time he ran but who voted for Obama this year. The economy and Iraq war helped sweep more white voters towards the democrats.
Actually, I think John McCain never looked more relaxed than he did the night he made his concession speech. He’s probably relieved he doesn’t have to be the major player regarding our country’s huge economic quagmire.
“‘Equity assurance’…might involve limited guarentees or insurance coverage to protect buyers from the possibility of loss of their initial equity stakes should property values in their neighborhoods decline.”
“Protect BUYERS??#!!”
What about all the established homeowners whose property values are sure to decline with the introduction of minorities or immigrants into their once-homogenous neighborhoods?
This amounts to more forced integration; compliments of agents of our own federal government! Let’s contact our legilators and inform them that we don’t want our tax dollars spent extending the Fanny/Freddie fiasco.
I am absolutely astounded by the stupidity, arrogance and udder disregard Bush has had for the back-bone of this country; white, middle-class, taxpaying Americans. This country is in shambles and he is either totally oblivious to what chaos he leaving us to shoulder or he just doesn’t care. It’s almost surreal. Is this really happening?
no one understands the subprime meltdown because everyone - left and right - has so much to hide.
Bush’s big push for minority home ownership has capsized the US & world economies - but we are in terror of a “left wing” Obama administration?
We will all be scurrying around in circles until we GET RID OF THE LEFT-RIGHT MODEL AND JUST DEAL WITH FACTS:
both parties were complicit in the real estate bubble, the subprime disaster, mass immigration, and the bailout.
Take a deep breath folks, and forget all the talk radio garbage about Obama being leftist or Muslim:
his policies will be pretty much the same as Bush’s, and that’s the problem.
The US is run by a tiny corporate oligarchy, and they have caused mass immigration.
They want endless cheap labor and no bargaining power for working Americans.
Really, folks, it is time to add up 2 & 2 & come up with 4, not 72,98765.
AA is good for setting whites against blacks, and cheap foreign labor keeps wages low for everyone.
We need a NEW PARTY that ends immigration & quotas altogether & institutes a slimmed down & unionized US labor force that produces THiNGS PEOPLE NEED, not “services” or “financial products” (am I the only one who wants to vomit when I hear that term?), and disciplines out-of-control corporate oligarchy.
George W. Bush has finally surpassed Jimmy Carter as the worst president in American history. Carter, an erratic and feckless ninny, simply stood idly by and let normally manageable events spin out of control.
Bush, showing true originality, created his own disasters from scratch. From the Iraq war, to the No Child Left Behind legislation, to unneeded drug entitlements, to the brilliant idea of trying to turn Hispanics into Republicans by waiving normal credit requirements for home purchases, Bush has proven himself a walking, (barely) talking engine of economic and political destruction. He’s destroyed the Republican Party and opened the gates to the Vandals.
A pity that America has no Bushido Code under which he’d be required to commit Hara-Kiri.
The fact is that whatever the “heart bleeding” liberals (or, recently, the “compassionate” conservatives) touch, it goes broke. From Lenin’s bokshevik revolution in 1917 to Johnson’s “war on poverty” in mid-1960ties to Clinton’s neo-socialization in 1990-ties to Bush’s “ownership society” in 2000s, the result of perhaps every major attempt of transfering the wealth from the successful to the failing has ended up with a disaster.
I consider Bill Clinton the primary culprit of the subprime mortgage crisis and the resulting global economic crisis. I believe he was the one who conceived this deceitful idea how to redistribute the wealth among the “underrepresented” minorities by measn of loosening credit standards.
For some, hordes of poor blacks etc. induldging themselves with fancy clothes, cars, cellphones and other gadgets on credit that they were not able to pay back might look like borrowing.
To me it looked more like looting.
Here is more on the subject:
Government-sponsored Speculation and the Housing Market Crash
http://geocities.com/readerswrite/commentaries/Sponsored_speculation.htm
