Maggie's Farm

Barrister ... Glad you posted this. Gives us a chance to point out that the problems with Fannie May and Freddie Mac began in 1977 with the Community Reinvestment Act, a law devised and passed by the Democrats, forcing banks to loan mortgage money to poorly qualified mortgage-seekers with bad prior financial records, because the Democrats thought it would be "nice" if everyone could own their own home. Prior to passage of this law, banks could do their own research on folks wishing to take out a mortgage, finding out if they had good credit records, had ever defaulted on loans, had criminal records and other very relevant information which might make a prudent lender decide not to lend. If I recall correctly, the CRA was enlarged during Clinton's administration.

The results were predictable -- loan defaults, bank losses, etc.

Now the Administration is getting cranky because banks are reluctant to hazard more money on shaky loans. And they're saying "do it, dammit."

Marianne

jma ... Thank you for mentioning the Annenberg Challenge, Obama's first towering management failure in the real world. Lost millions, it did. The mainstream media has long deliberately ignored the facts on this mess, in their effort to praise Obama to the skies on little or no evidence of excellence in management skills. It's a shame that the MSM refuses to face this. Nevertheless, we are getting more and more current evidence of Obama's ineptitude as a manager. After all, if you are going to collect evidence in the real world on how a business effort is going, you have to listen to what people tell you. And Mr. O is singularly unable to do that. Then there's the Netanyahu debacle in which he proved he knows nothing of diplomacy and shamed all of us citizens.

The New Yorker magazine, when it was still a good magazine, used to have little snippets of information at the bottom of the pages -- jokes, comments and such. One such category was called "Infatuation with the sound of one's own voice dept."

How appropriate for Mr. O.

Marianne

P.S. I wonder if we will ever in this lifetime find out what Mr. O's grades were at Occidental College, Columbia University and Harvard Law. They are apparently buried deep in the cat-box.