Fed Reserve PDF:
The Subprime Crisis: Is Government Housing Policy to Blame?
ABSTRACT
A growing literature suggests that housing policy, embodied by the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and the affordable housing goals of the government sponsored enterprises, may have caused the subprime crisis. The conclusions drawn in this literature, for the most part, have been based on associations between aggregated national trends. In this paper
we examine more directly whether these programs were associated with worse outcomes in the mortgage market, including delinquency rates and measures of loan quality.
We rely on two empirical approaches. In the first approach, which focuses on the CRA, we conjecture that historical legacies create significant variations in the lenders that serve otherwise comparable neighborhoods. Because not all lenders are subject to the CRA, this creates a quasi-natural experiment of the CRAâs effect. We test this conjecture by examining whether neighborhoods that have been disproportionally served by CRA-covered institutions historically experienced worse outcomes. The second approach takes advantage of the fact that both the CRA and GSE goals rely on clearly defined geographic areas to determine which loans are favored by the regulations. Using a regression discontinuity approach, our tests compare the
marginal areas just above and below the thresholds that define eligibility, where any effect of the CRA or GSE goals should be clearest.
We find little evidence that either the CRA or the GSE goals played a significant role in the subprime crisis. Our lender tests indicate that areas disproportionately served by lenders covered by the CRA experienced lower delinquency rates and less risky lending. Similarly, the threshold tests show no evidence that either program had a significantly negative effect on outcomes.
-------
There is no cherry picking of the data. Frank Luntz nor any FOXNews employee had any involvement in the above mentioned or any other empirical study. I haven't seen Heritage, Cato or AEI refute the findings. I'll have to go back and take a look at the 90's again but this past crisis wasn't govt programs.
Low rates made the banks want to loan more but it was the duty to not make loans to people who couldn't afford them. We all know the stories of how easy it was to buy a house with no money down and how no income verification was done on many loans. This is private sector's fault. Just because money becomes cheap doesn't mean you do stupid things with it.
So only those who condone fraud or have some sort of special gift to become oblivious to bullshit can trade?