I have no beef whatsoever in this discussion, but I do try to respond to questions about the housing crisis whenever I can, in order to prevent politics from clouding the issue any further. So here goes:
Quote from AAAintheBeltway:
Who pushed CRA?
President Carter, in 1977, I believe. I suppose he's the one to blame for it all.
Who pushed FNM/FRE to make subprime loans?
They pushed themselves, to keep market share.
Who protected FNM/FRE when their regulator tried to force responsible policies on them?
Both Democrats and Republicans. Similar attempts to strengthen the GSE regulator were made by both Democrats and Republicans. All failed, because the opposing party disagreed with the specifics of the proposals.
Whose boyfriend had a highpaying cush job at FNM?
I dunno, Newt Gingrich's? Just kidding... Both Democrats and Republicans were heavy users of the "special" relationship that existed between Congress and the GSEs. Just in the way of an example, FNM Senior VP for regulatory policy from 1998-2004 was Gingrich's ex-chief of staff Arne Christenson. Ken Duberstein, Reagan's ex-chief of staff was on the board of FNM and, apparently, received $1.8MM during 2002-2006 for "consulting on regulatory issues", wink-wink... There's countless other examples, which suggest that there's really very little reason to imagine that either party was any better than the other.
Who forced WaMu to promise to make hundreds of millions in bad loans to minorities as the price of approving a merger?
Well, this doesn't make a lot of sense. All banks were forced to comply with CRA and similar regulation. Only few failed. Does it make sense to claim it was all due to regulation? Was WaMu management somehow incapable of refusing to proceed with the mergers under the conditions imposed? The truth is that WaMu embarked on a massive acquisition spree from 1990 onwards (from what I have seen, at least 33 distinct transactions, with a sizable portion of acquired institutions targeting less than prime customers, e.g. Providian, Long Beach Financial etc). WaMu's CRA commitments didn't bring them down, especially in light of the fact that default rates on CRA-compliant loans were significantly lower than on subprime mtges in general.
Who forced the banks to fund ACORN?
I have nothing to say about ACORN itself, but I can find no evidence whatsoever of any banks being forced to fund ACORN. In fact, the only bank that I can see that ever funded ACORN is BoA, but that appears to be peanuts compared to the other funding sources (which are not entirely clear). So I am really not sure what evidence this idea is based on.
...but democrats pushed all these crazy policies that culminated in the housing finance crisis. It had zero to do with Gramm-Rudman and nothing to do with trading derivatives,etc. Mortgage lending was and is a core banking function. Democrats however intruded into the credit evaluation process and forced risky procedure on banks in the name of preventing discrimination, etc, whihc is code speak for paying off democrat constituencies.
This is incorrect and there's a variety of evidence to prove it.