Federal affordable-housing mandates were a major factor in the mortgage crisis, fueling the housing bubble and the subsequent collapse of the housing and financial markets, which helped bring down the economy.  Even the liberal Village Voice has admitted that.  Who drafted those awful mandates?  ACORN, reports the Washington Examiner, in “How ACORN Destroyed the Housing Market.”

How did ACORN cause the “housing bubble” and “financial collapse”?  ACORN lobbyists drafted “affordable-housing” mandates to pressure the mortgage giants to buy up more risky loans and mortgages…

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Veteran political commentator Michael Barone reports that liberal congressional leaders are pushing policies to “inflate the housing bubble again,” even though “our financial system broke down because we had, thanks to government policies, a housing bubble.”

Congressional leaders are ignoring warnings from experts across the political spectrum, such as conservative Peter Wallison’s October 16 piece in the Wall Street Journal, titled “Barney Frank, Predatory Lender,” and liberal Charles Lane’s recent piece in the Washington Post, “Doubling Down On the Wrong Housing Policy.”  (Wallison, a banking expert, prophetically…

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George Mason University Professor Ilya Somin explains how the Obama administration is expanding the awful policies that caused the mortgage crisis, like having taxpayers effectively underwrite risky-mortgage loans by bailing out GSEs at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.  Now, the administration is stepping up Federal Housing Administration subsidies for risky, junky mortgage loans that are likely to default in large numbers.

(The Obama administration doesn’t seem to have learned history’s lessons overseas, either.  White House Communications Director Anita Dunn cites as…

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President Obama is now pushing financial regulations that reinforce the worst features of the status quo.  They would actually increase regulatory pressure on lenders to make the risky, low-income loans that helped spawn the financial crisis.  At the same time, they would worsen the credit crunch by shutting down banking operations in retail outlets like Target, known as “industrial loan corporations,” that are convenient for consumers.  Earlier, Obama backed a new law that is wiping out many credit-card rewards programs and rebates, and leading…

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After the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) calculated the enormous costs of an all-encompassing health care scheme with a bloated public option, members of Congress from both parties asked for more due diligence before rubber stamping the plan.

 Yet today, the U.S. House of Representatives may rush through another piece of poorly designed command-and-control legislation that the CBO just yesterday said could have its own tremendous costs.  Though advertised as giving shareholders more “say” over CEO pay, the “Corporate and Financial Institution…

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The mortgage crisis was caused largely by the reckless government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and by federal affordable-housing mandates. But Obama’s proposed financial rules overhaul does absolutely nothing about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, admits Obama’s Treasury Secretary, tax cheat Timothy Geithner, even though he admits that “Fannie and Freddie were a core part of what went wrong in our system.” Worse, Obama’s plan is “largely the product of extensive conversations” with two lawmakers responsible for the corrupt status quo, Chris Dodd and Barney…

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Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) appears to be working in tandem with the Obama administration on making executive pay subject to shareholder votes. That seems fair enough; shareholders deserve some say over companies in which they have a stake. However, as CNBC “Squawk on the Street” host Mark Haines noted in an interview wiht Rep. Frank this morning, the nature of such ownership complicates things.

As Haines noted, many public company shares are in the hands of large institutions — he mentioned mutual…

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The Obama Administration’s mortgage bailout for irresponsible borrowers (including wealthy borrowers with modest mortgage payments) provides a bounty for reckless sub-prime mortgage lenders like Countrywide to rip off your retirement plan. Countrywide sold its junky mortgages on Wall Street, where they ended up being owned by mutual funds that probably are in your 401(K). But it continued to service the mortgages and make money doing so.

Now, the Obama Administration is offering Countrywide $1000 to cut each of those mortgages — which it…

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We’re beginning to see the talent exodus from TARP-funded financial institutions.  Yesterday in an op-ed Jake DeSantis of AIG-Financial Products wrote his “resignation letter” saying why he was leaving AIG.  One major reason was the raging mob calling for the heads of those who received retention payments, now called bonuses, and the tepid defense that AIG’s $1-per-year chairman gave before Rep. Barney Frank’s rabid committee.

Today we learned from the Wall Street Journal that several top managers at Banque AIG in France…

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Yesterday, liberal lawmakers, after publicly blasting the multi-million dollar AIG bonuses as undeserved and excessive, privately voted down GOP proposals to limit them. (AIG is a major donor to liberal politicians, such as Obama, who received more than $100,000, and Chris Dodd (D-CT), who received $280,000. AIG’s contributions over the last 6 years have gone mostly to Democrats).

Today, however, they are pushing legislation to impose a 90 percent tax on bonuses, not just at AIG, but also at other, healthy banks that received federal…

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Federal bailouts and related spending proposed by the Obama Administration now total 8 trillion dollars, according to the American Institute for Economic Research.

To pay for exploding federal spending, Obama’s Congressional allies are mulling huge tax increases. Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Cal.) wants a 90 percent tax rate. Obama has spent more in his first 50 days, by far, than George Bush spent on the entire Iraq War. That includes a pork-filled $800 billion stimulus package that deceptively repealed welfare reform, and that the…

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The Wall Street Journal editorial got it exactly right:

The Federal Reserve cut rates to historic lows Tuesday, but today it plans to vote to tighten consumer credit — taking away with one hand what it gives with the other. On the agenda is a rule-making that would impose, for the first time, what amount to federal price controls on credit cards.

That’s what the Fed’s proposed amendment to Regulation AA would do. In changes pushed by consumerist groups and grand-standing lawmakers, the proposal would…

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Seems like every business these days is becoming what’s called a “bank holding company” — seeking the shelter of the federal government’s deposit insurance and the ability to balance risks with more diversified lending and consumer deposits. Firms quickly granted “bank holding company” approval from authorities over the past few months range from the brokerages Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to credit card company American Express.

So many businesses are suddenly getting BHC approval that columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin has…

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Today, in addition to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s expected announcement of a major mortgage modification plan through the $700 billion TARP, Barney Frank’s House Financial Services Committee is holding a hearing entitled “Private Sector Cooperation with Mortgage Modification.” However, despite the word “cooperation” in its title, it’s clear from letters Frank and others sent out that the hearing will be confrontational rather than cooperative. Specifically, Frank and some fellow committee members seek to villify investors in mortgage-backed secuties who assert…

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I have an article on that very subject over at NRO today. Check it out!

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While conservatives are angry about a number of things at the moment, they should be at least as angry that the Congressional Democrats who helped stoke the mortgage crisis are getting away with blaming everyone else for it. Today, Senator Chris Dodd, the prime recipient of GSE lobbying funds and proud holder of a sweetheart mortgage from Countrywide, is holding hearings where the witnesses will blame everyone but Dodd, Barney Frank and their cronies. Republicans asked to invite witnesses but…

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Even the reliably-liberal BBC says that deregulation wasn’t the cause of the financial crisis.   Other liberal journalists like Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby have made the same point.

The government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac played a big role in spawning the mortgage crisis.  Lawmakers like Barney Frank blocked crucial reforms that might have reined them in.  Now, Frank is trying to change the subject, claiming that critics of Fannie and Freddie are, you guessed it, racist.  (Fannie Mae also engaged in…

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Banking expert Peter Wallison explains why deregulation didn’t cause the financial crisis, while Steven Malanga explains how government regulators foolishly pressured banks to drop prudent lending criteria as “discriminatory,” resulting in risky lending that caused the crisis. 

Peter Wallison was one of the few people who warned for years about the risky practices of the government-sponsored mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which helped spawn the mortgage crisis.  Liberal Congressional leaders turned a deaf ear to his pleas for reform, blocking reform legislation and claiming that the leadership of the fraud-ridden…

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Oh, Happy Day! And it certainly is for all those who value freedom, responsibility and the true free market in which individuals are free to profit from their risks on the condition that they don’t stick the rest of us with their losses.

It’s not hyperbole to say the Republican and Democratic backbenchers who defied both parties’ leadership to defeat this $700 billion package of Wall Street socialism literally saved America. Whatever their reasons, this defeat (or rather victory for freedom),…

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The $700 billion bailout of the financial system just got worse, thanks to a rewrite by Senate banking committee chairman Chris Dodd.  If the government loses money on all the “bad debt” it’s buying, the taxpayers will pick up 100% of the tab.  But if markets rebound, or the government makes money on any of its individual purchases, taxpayers won’t keep the money.  Instead, at least 20 percent of it will go into a housing slush fund that will benefit the left-wing group…

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