Academic

HOW WE GOT A FINANCIAL CRISIS: This is an account of what ails us that is radically at odds with ?

By Glenn Reynolds

HOW WE GOT A FINANCIAL CRISIS:

This is an account of what ails us that is radically at odds with the familiar tale of greedy bankers in $5,000 suits. ?Almost every financial crisis has political roots,? Rajan writes. The credit market?at least as regards housing?was distorted by government policy, not by a sudden and mysterious escalation in ?greed.? The trends that shook the world economy came out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, out of the Federal Housing Administration, and out of their ?regulator,? the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

By 2000, HUD required that low-income loans make up 50 percent of Fannie and Freddie?s portfolios. Out of ?compassionate conservatism,? perhaps, the Bush administration raised that mandate to 56 percent. Rajan cites Fannie Mae?s former chief credit officer, Edward Pinto, who notes that, by 2008, ?the FHA and various other government programs were exposed to about $2.7 trillion in subprime and Alt-A loans, approximately 59 percent of total loans to these categories.? Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute found that government-mandated loans accounted for two-thirds of ?junk mortgages.?

So much for the claim that the problem was too much market freedom.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on July 19, 2010 (boomark / email).