# Is George W. really to blame for our economic situation? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 4, 2009, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249 "2009-03-04T05:53:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249/41 "2009-03-05T01:09:18Z")
Anybody heard of the “Community Reinvestement Act”? This went in under Clinton-banks were “encouraged” to write mortgages for people who could not afford them. Later, the fact that Ginnie Mae and Fannie Mae would underwrite marginal mortgages, led to a huge inflation in house prices-all of a sudden dumpy houses were selling for big bucks. Then, people started “flipping” houses-and this drove prices up more. So it was financial “musical chairs”-and the whole rickety structure collapsed-once the borrowers began to default. Now we have a huge amount of unsold housing, which will depress house prices for years. It was a typical boom followed by a bust. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249/42 "2009-03-05T01:14:31Z")
Business journalist Steven Pearlstein seems to think so: (Link is to Washington Post – requires an email address to register, but is free) > [@](#): > > [That’s not to say there isn’t good reason for people of good will to worry about the federal debt. **Largely because of the profligacy of the Bush years, the debt is already too big** and will only get worse unless we begin to slow the growth in spending for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Let’s keep our eye on that big problem – the $66 trillion unfunded liability – not the $2 trillion or so in additional borrowing that the government is about to take on to rescue the financial system and stimulate the economy.](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/03/AR2009030303321.html?sub=AR) Bolding mine. ---
**Author:** ![R.P.McMurphy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7993a0/32.png) [@R.P.McMurphy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/R.P.McMurphy)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249/43 "2009-03-05T01:45:12Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Anybody heard of the “Community Reinvestement Act”? This went in under Clinton-banks were “encouraged” to write mortgages for people who could not afford them. Later, the fact that Ginnie Mae and Fannie Mae would underwrite marginal mortgages, led to a huge inflation in house prices-all of a sudden dumpy houses were selling for big bucks. Then, people started “flipping” houses-and this drove prices up more. > So it was financial “musical chairs”-and the whole rickety structure collapsed-once the borrowers began to default. Now we have a huge amount of unsold housing, which will depress house prices for years. It was a typical boom followed by a bust. Going back to the CRA is total BS. That act was passed **30 YEARS** ago and only applied to banks, not the mortgage vultures that were the primary perpetrators of the crisis. The act did not encourage loans to those that could not pay. Do your homework. There was plenty of time to make adjustments if there were errors in the initial act. The CRA also produced a lot of results that are readily apparent to those that have witnessed the reconstruction of urban areas that were otherwise beyond redemption. The CRA had nothing to do with condo flippers and speculators in Florida, Las Vegas and other “hot” real estate developments. As for “W” Bush: _ **Benign neglect!** _ There were those that saw this coming but he and his administration chose to ignore it because it was the only thing that was propping up economic policies that were doomed to fail. At least the dot-com bubble was supplying some technological advances. The housing bubble was just building shit for people that couldn’t afford the prices they were paying. Along with that, there was a mad rush to get people to take equity out of their only source of equity. How is this not a train wreck waiting to happen? The weird thing is, and as you might have guessed, I have almost nothing good to say about the “W” Bush Administration, if his privatization of Social Security had passed it might have worked for all of the wrong reasons. He structured the plan so that it would not take effect until after he was out of office (which came none too soon). We could have been awaiting the day when a lot of money would start flowing into the stock market and would rescue the current nosedive. The massive investment would have occurred when the market was at a low and those making the investment might have profited handsomely because of the bounce. Just a thought. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249/44 "2009-03-05T02:24:49Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Anybody heard of the “Community Reinvestement Act”? This went in under Clinton-banks were “encouraged” to write mortgages for people who could not afford them. Later, the fact that Ginnie Mae and Fannie Mae would underwrite marginal mortgages, led to a huge inflation in house prices-all of a sudden dumpy houses were selling for big bucks. Then, people started “flipping” houses-and this drove prices up more. > So it was financial “musical chairs”-and the whole rickety structure collapsed-once the borrowers began to default. Now we have a huge amount of unsold housing, which will depress house prices for years. It was a typical boom followed by a bust. How many mortgages did Ginnie and Fannie write.?The answer is zero. they backed them. The mortgages were written by lots of fly by night mortgage companies that took their billions and ran. They wrote unregulated, ridiculous mortgages which they sold off in minutes.A vlittle bit of regulation would have prevented the mess. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249/45 "2009-03-05T03:05:19Z")
> [@Smiling Bandit](#): > > …So, can you point out what deregulation you speifically have a problem with, and why, and what you think it did? Because if you cannot, then you are mindlessly repeating what some “opinion leader” tells you, and there’s no basis to even argue upon. Don’t much cotton to your tone, there, pardner. Seems like you using “cite” for a ploy, less about engaging debate than offering a pre-emptive sneer. Its entirely true, I’ve read about “deregulation” from several lefty sources, plus some centrist, and not a few just to the left of Otto Von Bismarck. So you can take your snotty innudendo about my dependence on biased sources and give it my best regards. And this just after you say (and I quote) [QUOTE= The Exact Same Guy, No Kidding!] ..Probably most of the wealth we enjoy today exists only because deregulation in the early 80’s… [/QUOTE] Without so much as a hint…not a shadow of the whisper of an authority outside of your esteemed self. And then you turn around and insist I do the Dance of the Seven Googles for your approval! Really, pal, who are you kidding? ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249/46 "2009-03-05T03:08:44Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > How many mortgages did Ginnie and Fannie write.?The answer is zero. they backed them. I believe that they bought a lot of them. > [@](#): > > The mortgages were written by lots of fly by night mortgage companies that took their billions and ran. They wrote unregulated, ridiculous mortgages which they sold off in minutes. Would you agree that Fannie and Freddie bought a lot of these? Or do you think Fannie and Freddie had problems recently for some unrelated reason? > [@](#): > > A vlittle bit of regulation would have prevented the mess. Regulation such as that being proposed in the video I linked to? ---
**Author:** ![IdahoMauleMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/71c47a/32.png) [@IdahoMauleMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IdahoMauleMan)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249/47 "2009-03-05T03:24:20Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Deregulation is not particularly at fault here. Not only are the financial markets highly regulated anyway, but the specific problem was one that Congresscritters encouraged. They wanted cheap mortgages any way they could. I don’t feel a lot of sympathy for the mortgage companies, but everyone wanted what happened to happen. They just didn’t think about the consequences of their wants, and the roots of this go back two decades. > > Secondly, the problem was that nobody _realized_ there was a problem. Sure, it looks obvious in hindsight, but at the time almost nobody (and certainly nobody in government) expected the crash. They were all busy making the bubble bigger, and nobody really understood the CDO’s or even knew _how_ to regulate them. > > Ye leftists want any excuse, I’m sure, to hate on him. But the fact is that he was doing the right thing by not trying to micromanage departments, and his appointees were frequently right to not get involved. Not everything is the executive’s problem (or sometimes even Congress’s), and if we all accepted that, things would go a lot better overall. > > To be honest, I’m not even a great supporter of Bush’s. I favored him against Gore and Kerry, sure, but not enthusiastically. I dislike his domestic goals. Nonethless, the left’s failure to honestly examine his record, and often to insist it’s something completely different than what it was, compels me to defend his good name. > > Thus, I can’t agree with **Sage Rat** ’s points. In 2001, (heck, even today) it wasn’t even clear how you could “reboot” the economy after the Dotcom crash. You can’t magically conjure up economic opportunities, as Obama is learning right now. A mild tax cut was probably the best, or only, thing to do, and any attempt to inject massive piles of cash into the economy would have accomplished nothing except inflation. Moreover, the economy recovered about as fast as it could have. > > You can, I suppose, blame everyone if you like, but Bush is pretty far down the list. Likewise, the repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act didn’t actually change the fundamental problem: credit raters were issuing dishonest ratings even on investments not offered by companies in the same family as themselves. You can argue these all contributed, and I won’t argue. The point is that eveyone wants to point fingers at somebody across the aisle of political alegiance claim “He did it! He’s the guilty party! That’s the guilty Party! Vote against them and give me, me, me all the power!” > > And that’s just stupid. If you accept that people ought to be able to make their own choices, they will choose badly sometimes, and behave badly sometimes, and governments can’t always know what they’re doing, or how to stop it, or what the consequences of doing it might be. And that assumes the government peeps are even trying to do their jobs properly in the first place, whereas we’ve been learning that more than a few of thewm were in bed with the people they were supposedly regulating. That’s the best post I’ve read on this Board in a long, long time. Thanks for taking the time to write it up. ---
**Author:** ![R.P.McMurphy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7993a0/32.png) [@R.P.McMurphy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/R.P.McMurphy)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249/48 "2009-03-05T03:27:35Z")
> [@brazil84](#): > > I believe that they bought a lot of them. > > Would you agree that Fannie and Freddie bought a lot of these? Or do you think Fannie and Freddie had problems recently for some unrelated reason? > > Regulation such as that being proposed in the video I linked to? Read what **gonzomax** said. They didn’t write them, they backed them. That’s what they were told to do. Did the Bush Administration do anything in their eight years to put the brakes on the idiocy? Eight year is enough time to do some analysis to avoid a crisis. Again, the housing boom was the only thing that was keeping the economy looking somewhat respectable but it was all a house of cards (excuse the pun). It’s not like there haven’t been housing busts in the past. There was a housing bust around 1980. Chicago condos busted, ski resort condos busted, then New York co-ops busted. You could have made some lucrative deals at the time. It’s just that those busts were more localized. The lesson wasn’t learned, the greedy started up again and took it to a national level. Now we all suffer. In the same sense the S&L crisis should have taught us a lesson about too much deregulation. Was the lesson learned? No! Now the consequences are hundreds of times more severe. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249/49 "2009-03-05T03:41:07Z")
I think timing played a huge role as well. The election cycle simply could not have come at a worse time. Bush was going out of office and then an official lame duck at a time when it was VITAL someone be at the helm. I think he could have done a hell of a lot more than he did, but I don’t think anyone would have been as strong as a president not on the cusp of becoming a ‘librarian’. \*I believe it’s Gore Vidal who refers to ex presidents as librarians, the men whose main power left is over building of their presidential library. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249/50 "2009-03-05T04:11:54Z")
> [@Spartydog](#): > > Read what **gonzomax** said. They didn’t write them, they backed them. That’s what they were told to do. Did the Bush Administration do anything in their eight years to put the brakes on the idiocy? Eight year is enough time to do some analysis to avoid a crisis. Again, the housing boom was the only thing that was keeping the economy looking somewhat respectable but it was all a house of cards (excuse the pun). It’s not like there haven’t been housing busts in the past. There was a housing bust around 1980. Chicago condos busted, ski resort condos busted, then New York co-ops busted. You could have made some lucrative deals at the time. It’s just that those busts were more localized. The lesson wasn’t learned, the greedy started up again and took it to a national level. Now we all suffer. > > In the same sense the S&L crisis should have taught us a lesson about too much deregulation. Was the lesson learned? No! Now the consequences are hundreds of times more severe. It has to be added that Republicans have done their damnedest to assign almost all the blame of the meltdown on the democrats in congress, the ratio of the blame is in reality the reverse: > **[The right blames the credit crisis on poor minority homeowners. This is not...](https://slate.com/business/2008/10/the-right-blames-the-credit-crisis-on-poor-minority-homeowners-this-is-not-merely-offensive-but-entirely-wrong.html)** > > We've now entered a new stage of the financial crisis: the ritual assigning of blame. It began in earnest with Monday's congressional roasting of... > [@](#): > > These arguments are generally made by people who read the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and ignore the rest of the paper—economic know-nothings whose opinions are informed mostly by ideology and, occasionally, by prejudice. Let’s be honest. Fannie and Freddie, which didn’t make subprime loans but did buy subprime loans made by others, were part of the problem. Poor Congressional oversight was part of the problem. Banks that sought to meet CRA requirements by indiscriminately doling out loans to minorities may have been part of the problem. **But none of these issues is the cause of the problem.** Not by a long shot. From the beginning, subprime has been a symptom, not a cause. And the notion that the Community Reinvestment Act is somehow responsible for poor lending decisions is absurd. > > Here’s why. > > The Community Reinvestment Act applies to depository banks. But many of the institutions that spurred the massive growth of the subprime market weren’t regulated banks. They were outfits such as Argent and American Home Mortgage, which were generally not regulated by the Federal Reserve or other entities that monitored compliance with CRA. These institutions worked hand in glove with Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, entities to which the CRA likewise didn’t apply. There’s much more. As Barry Ritholtz notes in this fine rant, the CRA didn’t force mortgage companies to offer loans for no money down, or to throw underwriting standards out the window, or to encourage mortgage brokers to aggressively seek out new markets. Nor did the CRA force the credit-rating agencies to slap high-grade ratings on packages of subprime debt. > > … > > On the other hand, lending money recklessly to obscenely rich white guys, such as Richard Fuld of Lehman Bros. or Jimmy Cayne of Bear Stearns, can be really risky. In fact, it’s even more risky, since they have a lot more borrowing capacity. And here, again, it’s difficult to imagine how Jimmy Carter could be responsible for the supremely poor decision-making seen in the financial system. I await the Krauthammer column in which he points out the specific provision of the Community Reinvestment Act that forced Bear Stearns to run with an absurd leverage ratio of 33 to 1, which instructed Bear Stearns hedge-fund managers to blow up hundreds of millions of their clients’ money, and that required its septuagenarian CEO to play bridge while his company ran into trouble. Perhaps Neil Cavuto knows which CRA clause required Lehman Bros. to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars in short-term debt in the capital markets and then buy tens of billions of dollars of commercial real estate at the top of the market. I can’t find it. Did AIG plunge into the credit-default-swaps business with abandon because Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now members picketed its offices? Please. How about the hundreds of billions of dollars of leveraged loans—loans banks committed to private-equity firms that wanted to conduct leveraged buyouts of retailers, restaurant companies, and industrial firms? Many of those are going bad now, too. Is that Bill Clinton’s fault? > > … > > Look: There was a culture of stupid, reckless lending, of which Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the subprime lenders were an integral part. But the dumb-lending virus originated in Greenwich, Conn., midtown Manhattan, and Southern California, not Eastchester, Brownsville, and Washington, D.C. Investment banks created a demand for subprime loans because they saw it as a new asset class that they could dominate. They made subprime loans for the same reason they made other loans: They could get paid for making the loans, for turning them into securities, and for trading them—frequently using borrowed capital. > > **At Monday’s hearing, Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., gamely tried to pin Lehman’s demise on Fannie and Freddie. After comparing Lehman’s small political contributions with Fannie and Freddie’s much larger ones, Mica asked Fuld what role Fannie and Freddie’s failure played in Lehman’s demise. Fuld’s response: “De minimis.”** > > **Lending money to poor people doesn’t make you poor. Lending money poorly to rich people does.** ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249/51 "2009-03-05T06:27:34Z")
Hey, since this is GD and not IMHO, can we stop with the “nobody could have seen this coming meme please?” It was bad enough to hear it from Dick Fuld, and even worse that it’s repeated ad nauseum. It is true that the global financial markets were all skewed to short term profit from the greatest Ponzi scheme in human history, but it is simply not true that no one said the ‘emperor has no clothes.’ Warren Buffet being a prominent example. Here’s what I don’t get about the whole mess. Why did Lehmans, UBS, Merrill et al have so much of this crap on their proprietary books? When I worked at Lehmans, the golden rule was you keep the sprinkles on top of the icing on the cake, and you give the rest of it into your clients. You never ever take anything less than the frosting onto your own books, and you proudly jam radioactive waste into your client base. Instead Lehman’s took on the radioacctive waste themselves, and of course it didn’t help that Dick doubled down about a year ago. ---
**Author:** ![Ocean\_Annie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8797f3/32.png) [@Ocean\_Annie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ocean_Annie)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249/52 "2009-03-05T06:39:40Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Deregulation wasn’t even much applied to financi8al markets, which are one of the few are was that have a whole federal department peering over its shoulder. Deregulation is not a magic word which means anything you like. I have already mentioned that the Glass-Steagal Act did not have anything to do with CDO’s, and that the key conflict of interest already existed. The Glass –Steagall Act was intended to curb wild speculation and prevent an economic catastrophe that only an unchecked all in one financial sector can cause. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act allowed banking conglomerates to control deposits, loans, insurance, securities, and real estate. Consequently, the depository banks essentially became giant hedge funds, investing large sums of highly leveraged bank deposits in risky speculation for financial gain. Hedge funds made enormous profits and eventually unthinkable losses by partnering with the largest federally insured depository banks. The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 gave banks unregulated authority to create hybrid investment instruments which led to the esoteric derivatives upon derivatives that no one understands, and both Gramm-Leach-Bliley and Futures Modernization gave lucky California rolling blackouts thanks to Enron and energy trading. Sarbanes-Oxley changed corporate governance, allowing limited liability partnerships. Rating agencies as well as Law and Accounting firms hired to protect share holders and the public with honest disclosure can now enabled cheating by one partner without any shared liability or financial risk to the firm. I consider all of these examples of the deregulation or reregulation that helped set the stage for the grand finale of a global economic collapse. ---
**Author:** ![Carmady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f04885/32.png) [@Carmady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carmady)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249/53 "2009-03-05T06:56:34Z")
> [@China\_Guy](#): > > It is true that the global financial markets were all skewed to short term profit from the greatest Ponzi scheme in human history, but it is simply not true that no one said the ‘emperor has no clothes.’ Warren Buffet being a prominent example. True. Warren Buffet’s warning about derivatives in 2002 could have been written yesterday. Somebody came up with a new and improved Ponzi scheme. That is precisely the kind of thing that absolutely does need to be regulated. It is impossible to know if any other administration would have heeded the warnings about impending systemic collapse. On the other hand, you can’t just assume they would have ignored them like the Bush administration did. Similarly, it is unclear how much the anti-regulation stance of the Bush administration, along with giving the private sector anything they wanted (such as giving banks the new bankruptcy laws they asked for), contributed to the problem. What is clear is that the Bush administration did about as bad a job as possible. Inaction in the face of impending disaster, except for occasionally acting to make the problem worse. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249/54 "2009-03-05T07:50:25Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Anybody heard of the “Community Reinvestement Act”? This went in under Clinton-banks were “encouraged” to write mortgages for people who could not afford them. Later, the fact that Ginnie Mae and Fannie Mae would underwrite marginal mortgages, led to a huge inflation in house prices-all of a sudden dumpy houses were selling for big bucks. Then, people started “flipping” houses-and this drove prices up more. > So it was financial “musical chairs”-and the whole rickety structure collapsed-once the borrowers began to default. Now we have a huge amount of unsold housing, which will depress house prices for years. It was a typical boom followed by a bust. Please don’t perpetuate this lie. From [The Federal Reserve](http://www.federalreserve.gov/dcca/cra/): > [@](#): > > Neither the CRA nor its implementing regulation gives specific criteria for rating the performance of depository institutions. Rather, the law indicates that the evaluation process should accommodate an institution’s individual circumstances. Nor does the law require institutions to make high-risk loans that jeopardize their safety. To the contrary, the law makes it clear that an institution’s CRA activities should be undertaken in a safe and sound manner. Fannie and Freddie started with more stringent requirements on the loans they bought than most. They did go astray, partially because they were privatized, and partially because of the demand for high yielding crap loans from the market, helped on by the improper rating of these loans. Plus, as **Spartydog** said, the worst culprits were not covered by CRA, and so CRA cannot be blamed. CRA also does not explain why brokers were incentivized to push risky loans. The increased profit from their high interest rates explains it quite well. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249/55 "2009-03-05T09:37:43Z")
> [@Spartydog](#): > > Read what **gonzomax** said. They didn’t write them, they backed them. That’s what they were told to do. 😕 Did they buy (much of) them or not? And were their policies a significant part of the problem or not? And a few years ago, were the democrats defending those policies or not? > [@](#): > > Did the Bush Administration do anything in their eight years to put the brakes on the idiocy? From the video, I gather that something was done, but I understand that Bush was also pushing the “idiocy” along with the democrats. Or at least not objecting very much to it. As noted above, I think Steve Sailer has an interesting point. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249/56 "2009-03-05T09:50:38Z")
In terms of the Community Reinvestment Act, here is a [graph](http://vdare.com/images/021509_ss_001.jpg) which purports to show CRA Dollar commitments (by banks) over time. Assuming the graph is correct, one can ask why a 30-year old law would suddenly start having such a big effect on dollar commitments roughly 10 years ago and rise dramatically over the last few years. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249/57 "2009-03-05T12:13:13Z")
What’s nice about the here and now is that Republican attempts to protect their sacred cows and blame their favorite targets are not holding sway. In fact, they are being exposed for fools. John Sununu went on The Daily Show, and his agenda was clear. He said “Fannie and Freddie” in nearly every sentence, but nobody was buying. For the moment, responsible people are in charge. I can only hope at how long. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249/58 "2009-03-05T15:56:14Z")
> [@brazil84](#): > > :…I gather that something was done, but I understand that Bush was also pushing the “idiocy” along with the democrats. Or at least not objecting very much to it… Perhaps a memory issue. Does anyone else recall how often GW waxed rhapsodic about the wonderful, wonderful housing market, how it was an “engine” for the economy, and the wonderful, wonderful “ownership society”? Not object very much? I daresay. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249/59 "2009-03-05T16:55:55Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Perhaps a memory issue. Does anyone else recall how often GW waxed rhapsodic about the wonderful, wonderful housing market, how it was an “engine” for the economy, and the wonderful, wonderful “ownership society”? > > Not object very much? I daresay. If you say so. I’m certainly not trying to argue that Bush (and the Republicans) are innocent in this. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2009, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249/60 "2009-03-05T17:09:48Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Please don’t perpetuate this lie. From [The Federal Reserve](http://www.federalreserve.gov/dcca/cra/): > Fannie and Freddie started with more stringent requirements on the loans they bought than most. They did go astray, partially because they were privatized, and partially because of the demand for high yielding crap loans from the market, helped on by the improper rating of these loans. Plus, as **Spartydog** said, the worst culprits were not covered by CRA, and so CRA cannot be blamed. CRA also does not explain why brokers were incentivized to push risky loans. The increased profit from their high interest rates explains it quite well. There is a local story 9leominster, MA), about a Brazilian alien who was able to obtain 3 “jumbo” mortgages, on three houses. He then sold all three, and kept the profits (he has since disappeared). What manner of financial institution would grant a mortgage (or three0 to such a client? What sort of lawyer would recommend granting a mortgage to such a man? odf course, the bank/financial institution is now stuck with the houses-which are now orth a fraction of the mortgage debt. Just asking. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-george-w-really-to-blame-for-our-economic-situation/488249.md?page=4)