>http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/subprime.htm

OK, so Clinton encouraged the FM's to buy subprime mortgages. Encouraging is not the same thing as forcing. I don't think the FM's needed much encouragement. There were grand manipulators ("special interests") behind the scenes making this happen. They just happened to buy off Clinton to bless it from the top. It really didn't matter who was president, those special interests were going to make this happen.

What I get out of this article is greed took down the housing market. The managers at the FM's knowingly steered their companies into collapse. They boosted revenue through bad mortgage acquisition, hid losses, and awarded themselves bonuses based on future projected profit that would never be. The special interests knew what was coming and reaped their windfall profits and got out while the getting was good. When the collapse eventually came the string pullers at the top walked away with billions of profits. All those FM managers that made huge bonuses for behavior they knew to be bad for the company; not one of them had to give back their bonuses. This happened at Enron, at WorldCom, etc. The difference being that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, instead of just screwing shareholders and employees, screwed the entire country.

Without true reform, this crap is just going to keep repeating. I'll repeat my mantra now - FIRE THEM ALL!

We live in a three-tiered society.
1. There are the financial elite that pull the strings of government to make ridiculous profits at the expense of society. These people make so much money that they can afford to employ cadres of attorneys and accountants to hide their profits and pay virtually no taxes.
2. There are the dwindling "rich" and "middle-class" tax payers that actually pay taxes - lots, and lots of taxes.
3. And then there are the "poor" who either pay no taxes or actually get a tax "refund" that is more than they paid (WTF!).