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NY Times Article Predicted Fannie/ Freddie Bailout 9 years Ago!

By
Real Estate Agent with ERA Four Corner Real Estate

"Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits." NY Times September 30th, 1999 (Bold/Underlined added)

And they did it anyway.

A friend of mine shared this article with me today. It is chilling in its prediction of the federal government bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ARTICLE

We here a lot lately of how the Bush economic policies have gotten us into this mess. I am not here to say that John McCain, or Senator Obama, have a plan I love that will fix this problem. But I do think it's important that we, as American citizens, start hearing some of the truth about how all of this happened. Also, how the government shares a huge amount of culpability going back almost a decade. Talk about short sided planning.

Again, while I believe that both parties are to blame, it is sad to see that the siren was going off way before this fire even got started. Congress, and the U.S. government as a whole, should be totally ashamed for allowing this to happen, while there were clear warning signs that it could lead to disaster. As with a lot of things, nobody cares while things are going well economically.

Now everybody cares.

So here we are digging ourselves out of a hole that we were told about. When I was in the Navy we used to have a saying, if someone meant well but really screwed things up in the end. It was, "Good initiative just bad judgment."

Clearly a fitting sentiment today.

Comments (2)

Bill Ladewig
LoanOfficerSchool.com - Escondido, CA
Experience Is Your Advantage

Hi Floyd, I understand elections are coming and one side wants to heap total responsibility for this current enconomic mess on the latest Bush.  But the reality is there were other fingers in the pie starting with President Reagan, Bush the 1st, Bubba and ending with the W.

Oct 09, 2008 06:02 AM
Floyd Magee
ERA Four Corner Real Estate - Farmington, NM

Bill -It sounds to me like you are saying that the Clinton administration had nothing to do with it. Am hearing you correctly? Honestly, I would rather not vote for either candidate on the ticket right now, but to say that the economic crisis we face today has been handed to us soley, even largely, by the Republicans seems a bit misinformed.

At any rate I am looking forward to the grit of the American free market machine, and good old fashioned ingenuity to get us back to a strong financial footing. Not either of the candidates we see today.

Oct 09, 2008 06:38 AM