Now where have I heard that before?

Go on Dubya, bail your mates out, there's only a few Golden Parachutes left back here!

Couldn't resist the chop, with todays news from the White House Bunker!

Wiz

Two days ago there was an OLD news item, about a speech President Bush seems to have made early 2002? when he urged the banks to make loans available to low income households, because they needed to be able to buy homes in the USA, and that was what sparked off the whole crisis the banks are in today, because low income households can't afford to buy a house, no matter how cheap the loan deal was - making the banks lose out, when the house prices went up and up and up.

Sorry, Anna, but this started under the Clinton administration: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_/ai_14779796

Here's an interesting summary from 2004: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB109684359646434797.html?mod=Review-Outlook-US

one thing I noticed was when my wife and I had to transfer to Georgia from North Carolina. We qualified for a mortgage when we bought our house in NC but it seemed like they did a lot of "making sure" so I'm guessing that we were near the borderline of qualifying for the home we wanted to purchase. Then about 3 years later we get transferred to Georgia and still have our house in NC. We find a house in Georgia and go to the bank and I think I only had time to blink twice and we had our mortgage approved with still having our other mortgage in NC to pay. We would not have been able to keep up both mortgages for the 11 months that our home was on the market in NC but one of the company perks was that they paid all expenses on the unoccupied home until it was sold. Otherwise we would have had to give up in a matter of time the home we are living in now. I noticed that with car loans too that kids were driving these beautiful cars around and finding out that some got loan approvals with no problem. Wild times we have going on here. How are other countries doing? We seem to be the only ones making news these days but not for good reasons....hahaha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj6tRYou5uk

yep the Clinton Administration did set this standard in the previous decade. And with that a lot of these mortgages would be bought by Fannie & Freddie type companies.

Curious though... Wouldn't it then have been the next administrations job to adapt to changing circumstances such as this? Where because of low rates, people were buying houses just to flip them. Or construction companies are building them at a faster rate then there were buyers for them? Then all of a sudden we have too many houses and not enough buyers? Making the market fall on its ear? This isn't a Republican or a Democratic problem anymore. This is now a burden for all of us to enjoy. Thanks Uncle Sam!

That being said... IMPO You should also take responsibility for yourself. When the wife and I were out looking to move, our Realtor kept showing us houses lets say for 250k. These were way out of our 'comfort level' price range and at the very high end of what we were approved for. She would say things like oh we can work out something yada yada. but no, I knew we cannot afford that payment, when my debt to income ratio was more realistically looking for a home closer to 170k. I'd like to eat more than just hot dogs & tomato soup thanks!

More times than not people don't realize things like this and they just think, "wow we can afford this place"? OK then sign me up! Then when the mortgage suddenly rises or you figure out that the ARM wasn't what you thought it was, you're suddenly in trouble and foreclosure becomes a reality.

The only thing I don't want to see is a nice golden parachute for those top executives down at wall street that we're now going to bail out to the tune of
BILLIONS of dollars.

To put the bailout in terms everyone can understand, it will cost every man, woman and child in the United States about $3,300 to finance the package.

So, does this mean that my 3 kids are ALREADY in debt for $3,000? Should I send them out to work now...waitaminute...that might not be such a bad idea...

only person to blame are the irrisposible people that took out these loans they had no intentions to pay back... thanks society!

anyone has an idea what the price is to be in irak en afganistan still??? when they bombed bagdad i heard some prices flying by, i think of one skutrocket i can live a life time and they send thousands in the air, other problem is the lowcost in china to make things , it also is a pain here for artpaintings

when it comes to politics...
for once we agree

some blame goes to the lender as well though. They should know when they do a credit check that some people don't have the funds to pay for the loans they are receiving. Yet they say... sure go right ahead and take this money... no big deal

Ted I think it goes back even further.This particular situation started with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in 1938...Fannie Mae=Freddie Mac=GSE=high risk mortgages=increase interest rates=
defaulted loan paymets=crisis=unemployment=repossess homes=government bailouts to GSE=bleed the people=monopolize,concentrate and consolidate power=New World Order!...It's an old con game!

Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Fiscal Support: Before discussing what the bill will do to support “Fannie Mae” and “Freddie Mac,” I will explain a little about what these two GSEs (Government Sponsored Enterprises) are. Fannie Mae was created in 1938 as part of the “New Deal” by President Franklin Roosevelt.
"Because of the collapse of the housing market following the Great Depression, private lenders were unwilling to invest by providing real estate loans. Fannie Mae was created to provide local banks with federal money to ensure those banks would finance real estate loans, thus encouraging home ownership.
Originally, Fannie Mae was a governmental institution. By borrowing money from the government to lend to local banks, Fannie Mae was able to provide low interest loans to the local banks that translated into low interest rate real estate loans to homeowners.
Fannie Mae made its profit from the interest rate difference between the rates it borrowed at from the federal government and the rate at which it loaned money to banks.
In 1968, Fannie Mae was removed from the federal government and became a Government Sponsored Enterprise which exempted it from taxation and oversight by the government, but continued the implied backing of the U.S. government for its solvency and ability to continue to lend money. At this point, foreign investors would invest money in Fannie Mae, who then loaned the money to local banks.
This created the secondary mortgage market when Fannie Mae essentially packaged large chunks of home mortgages and sold them to domestic and foreign investors. With the U.S. government’s implied backing, Fannie Mae was able to continue to borrow the money to write loans at a very low rate.
In 1970, Freddie Mac was created to eliminate the monopoly that Fannie Mae enjoyed and was also given GSE status. As the financial systems to support the secondary markets matured, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had an easier time controlling the secondary market through the use of Collateralized Mortgage Backed Securities (CMBS).
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would use the large bundles of mortgage loans and, instead of selling it to an individual investor or group of investors, the loans would serve as collateral for an offering of stocks or bonds in a particular group of mortgage loans.
This allowed even more liquidity, because more individuals could afford a very small piece of these CMBS at a few dollars a share, than could invest millions, tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars to buy a group of mortgage loans.
Today, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac control almost 90 percent of the secondary mortgage market through the use of CMBS. The two GSEs guarantee the purchase and trade of mortgages and own or back $5.2 trillion in real estate backed mortgages.
However, there has been serious concern from investors recently about the solvency of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because of the number of defaulting loans."...etc.etc.etc......

http://www.porac.org/newsarticle7.html

Along the lines of what Mightybeet said , except I will expand upon it..
I blame every last person that gave in to greed, and irresponsibility, and
am disgusted that those who did this to us are the ones now pointing fingers while people like me still go to work everyday, still pay our bills,
take all this childish abuse quietly for the most part, and
will get stuck with the short end of the stick because when this is all said and done we'll still be carrying the load on our backs while you're still looking for new angles on the free rides.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac...don't they seem like funny names for huge multi $ TRILLION Government Sponsered Enterprises.Does anybody else see the subliminal here or is it just me.Strikes at the heart of middle America.The real victims of this huge con job.Do you really think the power elite is feeling this crisis..The guys at the top are getting huge bargains on wall street as share prices drop to unheard of levels.The real powerbrokers are having a field day ie. government bailout of these huge corporations and the buy up of bankrupt corporations for next to nothing (ie. Lehman Bros. comes to mind).It's harvest time on the fields of savage capitalism and the neo-cons are their cronies bringing in the "cattle to the slaughter",or to put it in a more politically correct terminology "sheep to be fleeced".Which brings me to the solution of this whole mess.It's explicitly portrayed in this wonderfully animated Pixar short called Boundin'.Let nature take it's course,chill out,sit back and enjoy the fleecing then wait and grow another fine crop of fleece during the next coming "boom" in this never ending economic cycle which the powers that be have provided for us in this backward planet circling an average star on the edge of just another one of billions of galaxys in the vastness of space we call the universe.Enjoy the clip .... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJC9vw6F4Vo

"isn't it nice to now there's Jackalopes around"

Luis, I know the origins of the programs, but the changes that occurred to bring about this mess took place in the Clinton years. Follow the links I posted.

That's just new debt. They were deadbeats to the tune of $22,000 or the difference on the outstanding 9 trillion before the bailout. Where do you think the treasury got the money to sell to all of these collapsing banks @ 2%? They printed it! Not all of Americans are scumbags who didn't pay their bills. Many had ARM's. I feel for people that could make $1500 but couldn't make $2500 and pay for gas. Realistically, $4.99 diesel caused the collapse. Not bad Americans.

I 'm not about to defend Clinton cause I think all politicians are out for their own self interests,so I guess each administration has contributed to the situation we now face. I can see that lowering restrictions and giving out high risk mortgages (btw.some high income people can also be considered high risk and live beyond their means-especially in this high pressure consumer society) could have negative repercussions in the long run, but the essence of creating these institutions was exactly to encourage home ownership "for all people richer or poorer" after the great depression as part of Roosevelt's new deal.People need to live somewhere other than under a bridge.The problem is not giving out the mortgages and loans but why they can't be paid.If people were honest,responsible, had the jobs to make the money and pay their mortgages we wouldn't be in this situation.The mortgage crisis,however is a sympton of a deeper economic,social and spiritual problem in the world as a whole.And a very convoluted and complicated one at that.