In a housing policy statement released this week, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney blamed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the financial crisis, saying they were at the "center" of the problem. Of course, mortgage professionals who worked in the business during the past 10 years know full well that if Wall Street hadn’t supplied warehouse lines of credit to dozens of nonbanks and then securitized their crappy subprime loans without properly re-underwriting them the losses would have been much less. Of course, this doesn’t absolve Fannie and Freddie of their sins which include: charter creep, bullying lenders, unfair market advantage, buying off politicians, and supplying liquidity to the subprime market by purchasing some of the ABS – ABS sold to them by (you got it) Wall Street firms the likes of Merrill Lynch, Lehman, take your pick. During the mid-2000s the GSE were losing market share to the Street. It’s all in the history books. It would be nice if both candidates read up on the crisis instead of listening to the so-called ‘experts’ on Fox News and CNBC. Keep in mind that if the Bush tax cuts don’t get renewed the wealthy talking heads at Fox and CNBC will be paying much higher taxes. Is there a political agenda among the rich elite TV reporters of our nation?
