Perhaps, but a somewhat different pattern in my view. Note the dates.
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September 30, 1999
In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
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In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers.
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Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...xprod=permalinkQUOTE
September 11, 2003
New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae
The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.
Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.
The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.
The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt -- is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.
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Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.
''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''
Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.
''I don't see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,'' Mr. Watt said.
The proposal died in Congress.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...xprod=permalinkThe Clinton administration was obsessed with multiculturalism and social engineering which dictated where mortgage lenders could focus their market. Regulations forced some lenders to lower standards for loans in order to avoid government penalties. Bill wanted the Community Redevelopment Act to be the force behind loans that encouraged minority homeownership.
Yes, the meltdown was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary market for subprimes by Wallstreet funders but the origin was much earlier in the mid/late 90's. Indeed the Bush administration is not blameless, nor is either party in Congress. However the seed was planted in the ’90s by Clinton and his social engineers who were the political catalysts behind this slow-motion financial train wreck.
