A $700 Billion (much, much, more, really) Affirmative Action Program

It is increasingly becoming clear that a root cause of the current subprime mortgage crisis was driven by affirmative action policies and demands of the greatest president of the U.S.A. himself, George W. Bush (History will redeem him!).

AMREN dug up this article from 2002 from Reality Times.

[...]most of the heavy lifting was assigned to two mortgage market players that have sometimes come under fire from Bush administration officials and Congressional Republicans: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Fannie’s and Freddie’s commitments are the bedrock core of the President’s ambitious plans–but didn’t get the headlines. Fannie Mae agreed to increase its already substantial lending efforts to minority families by targeting another $260 billion of mortgage purchases to them during the next nine years. Freddie Mac agreed to buy an additional $180 billion in minority-household home loans during the same period.

Both corporations also announced specific plans to increase home purchases by African-Americans, Hispanics and immigrants. Fannie Mae, for example, pledged to create an entirely new mortgage product “designed to meet the unique needs of New Americans.” The new loan concept would include underwriting changes that remove some of the common barriers immigrants encounter here–denial of credit because of inadequate or short credit histories, reliance on communal funds for downpayment money, and language and cultural issues. Fannie also promised to establish 100 “outreach partnerships” with predominantly-minority churches, mosques and “other faith-based institutions” to fund mortgages for their congregations.

Why is this stuff only visible in fringe media? This stuff saddled out grandchildren with unbelievable debt, never mind us…why aren’t all the mainstream media channels and periodicals discussing the role of affirmative action in subprime mortgages?