Interesting article in the Cleveland PD yesterday regarding the new changes to mortgage lending. One point that screamed for more was the reference that if these controls were put in place previously in 2002 when they were proposed, the mortgage meltdown wouldn’t have happened, unfortunately due to political pressure they were shot down.
I know many newspapers have gone the route of just posting AP or Reuters articles in their paper and call that “reporting”, but wouldn’t it be nice to know which politicians brought political pressure to bear to shoot these controls down?
Ken Lay made an off hand comment in an investor conference call stating that ENRON was fine. He was prosecuted and sentenced to years in jail, but died before serving time. Barney Frank told everyone that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in great shape and essentially, anyone that wanted to question him or Fannie or Freddie’s free spending ways was a racist. ENRON’s collapse was a pimple on the rear-end of Fannie and Freddie. Hey Barney, anymore great advice for us?