Obama: It's the banks fault!

During his State of the Union speech last night President Obama laid the blame of the nations housing crisis a the feet of the banks when he said...

People bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway.

Perhaps the Chosen One has forgotten that fellow liberal democrat, Barney Frank, sits on the House Banking Committee which has jurisdiction over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two of the largest mortgage lenders in the country.

Back in 1991 Barney Frank worked to loosen regulations for two and three family homes even though those mortgages were defaulting at twice and five times the rates of single homes respectively.

At the same time, Mr. Herb Moses, a Fannie Mae executive was also championing the relaxation of these regulations.

In 1994, the Department of Housing and Urban Development recommended imposing tougher regulations on Fannie Mae to ensure that lender's liquidity but, once again, Fannie Mae (Herbert Moses) and Barney Frank made sure no such regulations were imposed.  (Whoops, I almost forgot to mention that Barney Frank and Herbert Moses had been lovers since 1987. Can anyone say conflict of interest?)

In 1999, Barney Frank's House Banking Committee allowed Fannie Mae to further reduce restrictions on loans in an effort to increase home ownership among minorities and low income customers. At that time even the New York Times reported that if Fannie Mae fails, "...the government will have to step up and bail them out..."

During a July 2008 interview, when the handwriting was on the wall, Barney Frank, as the head of the House Banking Committee, stated "I think this is a case where Fannie and Freddie are fundamentally sound, that they are not in danger of going under..."

Unfortunately, not only for Barney, but for the rest of us as well, less than two months later, Fannie Mae went belly-up!

After years of providing essentially no governmental oversight for Fannie Mae while maintaining a long term relationship with an executive of that company and continually blocking GOP lawmakers from imposing stricter regulations on this mortgage giant, Congressman Barney Frank had the audacity to blame the mortgage giant's failure on the Republicans.

It was the liberal democrats who forced the lending institutions into a position of making these "bad" loans and now we are supposed to simply sit back and let an even more liberal democrat administration and Congress fix the problem?

If you believe this line of tripe, I have a bridge in Broklyn that I would like to sell you!