Was it a false statement when the heads of Fannie and Freddie, along with both former heads testified to that very thing before Congress in 2008? NHI.org,Alan J. Fishbein, Sept/Oct. 2002, Going Subprime, "Interestingly, subprime market growth in the 1990`s occurred largely without the participation of Fannie/Freddie. They traditionally have purchased a small share of these loans, but this figure is expected to grow significantly in the next few years." Government Intervention In Housing,"Fannie/Freddie And Subprimes", 4/2/09, "The amounts of subprimes were relatively small through 2002, but the real explosion in subprime securitization took place later." McLatchey Newspapers, "Private Sector Loans, Not Fannie/Freddie Triggered Crisis", 10/12/08, "Subprime lending hit it`s high in 2004-06. In 2006, Fannie/Freddie held 24% of all subprimes, down from 48% in 2004." Wall Street Journal, 9/23/08, "Fannie/ Freddie were the largest buyers of subprimes between 2004 and 2006." Neal Boortz, 7/8/09, "between 2002 to 2007 Fannie/Freddie purchased $1.09 trillion of mortgages issued to borrowers with credit scores below 660, one of the definitions of subprime. That was 54% of all such mortgages purchased in those years. Fannie/Freddie bought $18 billion in subprimes in 1995, $38 billion in 2002, and $175 billion in 2004." So when did they get into subprimes heavily, certainly not until this decade? Why did you neglect to answer my question about any culpability in the Bush administration?

"Fannie/Freddie did not get heavily involved in sub-primes until the Bush years, they felt they were being left out and rushed in..."
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With utterly false statements like this, it serves little point trying to converse with you. I'm done.

The comment was that there were no red flags raised about the problem during the Clinton years,and his"keys" were useless with an antagonistic congress. Fannie/Freddie did not get heavily involved in sub-primes until the Bush years, they felt they were being left out and rushed in, only to make the problem worse. When the red flags were raised in 2004-5, where was the administration that was in power? Clinton will be dogged by history for being the President who let Phil Gramm de-regulate, thereby pouring gas onto the fire. I have admitted my bias before, but you seem to have a blind spot for anything the Bush administration did. Do you have any doubts about the Iraq invasion, doubling the debt, ignoring the Constitution, authorizing torture, neglecting Afghanistan to push the Iraq war, anything?

Pharm, yes you did respond to another poster. I never questioned your stance on Frank or Dodd, both part of the problem, but neither is the sole reason for the issue. I did question your statement of the democrats did not have the keys to the government from 1995-2006; when in fact they did have the Presidency for 6 of those years. You accuse me of bias yet state you will always fail to see how the policies of the Clinton years had a big effect on the “melt down”. Please read http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/h... and http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/22/news/com...

Because of the direct actions of policies, not laws, the American tax payer is paying for blunders of politicians (both sides) with good intentions.

You can keep your head in the sand and keep thinking everything was fine and there were no issues until after Clinton left office if that makes you feel better. May I suggest if that is the cards you want to play, don’t lecture others for condemning facts they don’t believe.

RAF, I was responding to a writer who wanted Frank to go to jail, and also said Dodd was a major player in the economic mess. With your latest reply to me, why didn`t you also include his comments, as they are ridiculous. If you read my responses I said both parties were to blame, but the Republican policies in the Bush administration were the ones that pushed home ownership to unqualified individuals, not Frank and Dodd. I will always fail to see how the policies in 1993-2000 had a big effect on a sub-prime meltdown in 2007-8. Any bad loans made then would have long been defaulted or made whole. A Republican Congress , virtually in the majority from 1995 till the end of 2006, along with a Republican President for six of those years, did nothing to regulate mortgages, banks, Fannie/Freddie, yet Frank and Dodd are the main culprits because they are Democrats. You are quick to condemn peoples "facts" unless they are slanted towards the right, then you are quiet.

Amusing how some on the far left in congress propose this sort of frivolous non-sense about "employment non-discrimination" when the number UN-employed is going through the roof. Perhaps they should just make the bill cover those being employed by the governmnet, because that is the only area that is growing, and actually employing anyone!
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This sort of stuff is utterly hilarious. These clowns actually spend countless hours coming up with legislation like this. Like there isn't any other pressing matters congress needs to handle today, haha. Remember it was not to long ago that Arlin Spector wanted congress to investigate the New England Patriot's "spy gate" ordeal! VERY IMPORTANT STUFF! Is it any wonder why the one time congress had record attendance was when the baseball juicers showed up to lie?
Keep rearranging those deck chairs on the Titanic baby!

Pharm, you’re disillusioned if you think there was no “mortgage mess” prior to the bubble bursting. There was a bubble precisely because of government intervention, the last few years was the tipping point and not the root cause.

When Joe’s bank approved a home loan with little to nothing down knowing full well their approval did not expose them at all if the mortgage defaulted, there is a problem. Fanny and Freddie, government entities, were put in place and required to purchase these exact type of loans from lending institutions...placing the onus of securing the paper (good or bad) on the backs of the tax payers directly because of government involvement and legislation (voted on by both parties).

This house of cards had been building for decades and was doomed to fail…and the bottom has not been felt yet. The ease at which securing a loan was possible, because of government intervention, caused a run on real estate, inflating prices and fueling the greed of flippers and those wanting to move up in living conditions with little to no out of pocket expense.

Attempted finger pointing to a person or party as the “guilty player” does injustice to the truth. The laws, policies, and procedures over the past decades by members of both parties caused the mess; the result of good intentions no doubt not unlike bankrupt programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Postal Service, and countless others.

The continued expectation of having the people (system) that created the environment for the problem to now be the people (system) to fix it, is a perfect example of Einstein’s definition of insanity; doing the same thing --- in this case using the same people (system) --- over and over and expecting a different result.

For those six years there was no problem brought up about the mortgage mess was there? For those six years who had Congress, except for a very brief time it was the Republicans. Bush had a Republican Congress until 2007, that never passed in the the Senate, never even brought up, any legislation about the sub-primes, or Fannie/Freddie. To blame Frank, or Dodd, and not the party in charge, is ridiculous.

"Look back and find out who had the keys to the government from 1995 through 2006"
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Depends on "who", who is; no pun intended. Are you talking majorities in the houses of congress or the President? For 6 of the 10 years you list there was a Democrat in charge of the White House.

winterstinks, you are totally wrong. Frank went on the House floor numerous times during the Bush Administration pleading for more rental units, not "every American should own a home," like the Administration was pushing. And ,tell me if you can how a member of the minority, not in charge of any Committee would be asked by Bush if everything was alright.It wasn`t until the Democrats were voted in , taking office in 2007, that re-regulation was done. The Republicans had the votes, but Bush threatened a veto, and the Senate never brought up a bill about the mortgage mess. When was Frank a Senator? Any loans done in the Clinton years did not have an effect in 2006,7,or 8, and the CRA did business with lenders that were not involved in sub-primes. Look back and find out who had the keys to the government from 1995 through 2006, it wasn`t the Democrats. They are not blameless, but it was the Bush Administration pushing for the loans,(Bush,"I will use the mighty muscle of the government "), and they ran the government at the same time.

According to a recent study by the US Census Bureau the number of GAY couples fell from 2006 tom 2008 from 765,000 to just about 600,000. Homosexuality in general is a diminishing social matter today. All of us, regardless of sexual preference, race, creed, age, or physical(in)ability are already well protected by OSHA, hate crime, EEOC, Affirmative Action, anti terrorism, and several other statutory laws designed for our personal health and safety in the workplace. Why is this woman (Tammy Baldwin) wasting so many tax dollars in Washington on yet another law that is clearly unnecessary? Wouldn't her time be better spent working to fix our nation's economic problems and helping to get Americans - gays and straight folks alike - back to work? I certainly think so.

Barney Frank! He should be in PRISON. This scumbag is the one who gave out unqualified mortgages for years, first in the Clinton ad., then lied to Bush for 8 years when asked if everything was alright, 17 times, by Bush. He said "everything's fine". He costs retirees millions. He and Dodd and Obama are the major cause of this. Hopefully the market will come back again.

While I disagree with their life-decisions, I too could care less what they do in private. I am glad a few of you are making the same statement I am. Which is, let's take care of real problems. I couldn't help notice Baldwin is pushing for something personal to her; I thought she was suppose to be representing the population who voted her in? Sounds to me like a very 'cherry-picked' topic she is pressing. That's an abuse of power in my eyes. All the politicians should be focusing nearly 100% on other huge problems right now.

crunch-munch, the unofficial tally of atheists in Congress appears to be 1.
http://friendlyatheist.com/2008/12/20/th...

Interesting comment on an alternative method of representation on that page:
"Miko Says:
December 20th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
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That’s one of the many reasons I don’t like geography-based representation. It made sense when sending news took a week, but these days it’s just an excuse for politicians to gerrymander themselves into an eternal position of power and bribe voters through outrageous pork projects. Wouldn’t it make much more sense to just let each voter choose who they want to represent them and weight each representative’s vote by how many people they’re representing? (And seriously: if you had a choice between a representative who shares your politics and one who lives in DC but vacations in your area for a few weeks a year, which would you pick?)
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Then, instead of being totally left out due to not being a majority in any geographical area, we’d actually see about 16% of the Congress be nontheists, as well as a nice scattering of Greens and Libertarians (and perhaps other third parties, although I’d guess that they’d still be too small to matter even with a reform like this). And since everyone would get to choose who represents them, there wouldn’t be an issue of 45% of the population being disenfranchised in Congress.
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Unfortunately, it’d require a Constitutional amendment, so the Republocrats will never let something like this happen."

This is so dumb I cant believe that we need a law to tell us that what somebody does in their own bedroom is nobody elses business. But then again we had to pass a law telling us its wrong to have sex with dead people so its not surprising.

And by the way, crunch, there are 3 openly gay members of Congress - (Jared Polis, CO)

I can't wait to see the comments on this one..... *sigh*