The Wall Street Journal outlines New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's impact on the financial crisis through his role in the housing market bubble. Remember, it was those mortgage backed securities, whose value had eroded in successive waves of foreclosures, that clogged the credit markets precipitating our unprecedented bailout mania.
HUD's Web visitors learn that in 1999 "Secretary Cuomo established new Affordable Housing Goals requiring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—two government sponsored enterprises involved in housing finance—to buy $2.4 trillion in mortgages in the next 10 years. This will mean new affordable housing for about 28.1 million low- and moderate-income families. The historic action raised the required percentage of mortgage loans for low- and moderate-income families that the companies must buy from the current 42 percent of their total purchases to a new high of 50 percent - a 19 percent increase—in the year 2001."
Fannie and Freddie's purchases of subprime loans skyrocketed. The problem wasn't merely that the Cuomo HUD was raising the volume of loans for which taxpayers would be on the hook. It was also encouraging a dangerous decline in underwriting standards at these government sponsored enterprises (GSEs). Says former Fannie Mae chief credit officer Edward Pinto, "HUD commissioned much research aimed at forcing the adoption of more flexible lending standards by the GSEs."
In 1999, the Urban Institute published a HUD-commissioned study of Fannie and Freddie's credit guidelines. Among its findings: "Almost all the informants said their opinion of the GSEs has changed for the better since both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made substantive alterations to their guidelines and developed new affordable loan products with more flexible underwriting guidelines."
Mr. Cuomo's drive to pump up the volume on taxpayer-backed mortgages didn't stop at Fannie and Freddie. In 2008, Wayne Barrett wrote in the leftist Village Voice about the changes Mr. Cuomo wrought at the Federal Housing Administration, encouraging bigger loans with smaller down payments.
In American liberalism it's common for politicians like Cuomo to create a crisis through misguided liberal policies and then ride to the supposed rescue, often proposing and implementing more misguided liberal policies. Back in September of 2008 Charles W. Calomiris and Peter J. Wallison explained that the housing bubble was a created crisis.
How did we get here? Let's review: In order to curry congressional support after their accounting scandals in 2003 and 2004, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac committed to increased financing of "affordable housing." They became the largest buyers of subprime and Alt-A mortgages between 2004 and 2007, with total GSE exposure eventually exceeding $1 trillion. In doing so, they stimulated the growth of the subpar mortgage market and substantially magnified the costs of its collapse.
It is important to understand that, as GSEs, Fannie and Freddie were viewed in the capital markets as government-backed buyers (a belief that has now been reduced to fact). Thus they were able to borrow as much as they wanted for the purpose of buying mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. Their buying patterns and interests were followed closely in the markets. If Fannie and Freddie wanted subprime or Alt-A loans, the mortgage markets would produce them. By late 2004, Fannie and Freddie very much wanted subprime and Alt-A loans. Their accounting had just been revealed as fraudulent, and they were under pressure from Congress to demonstrate that they deserved their considerable privileges. Among other problems, economists at the Federal Reserve and Congressional Budget Office had begun to study them in detail, and found that -- despite their subsidized borrowing rates -- they did not significantly reduce mortgage interest rates. In the wake of Freddie's 2003 accounting scandal, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan became a powerful opponent, and began to call for stricter regulation of the GSEs and limitations on the growth of their highly profitable, but risky, retained portfolios.
If they were not making mortgages cheaper and were creating risks for the taxpayers and the economy, what value were they providing? The answer was their affordable-housing mission. So it was that, beginning in 2004, their portfolios of subprime and Alt-A loans and securities began to grow. Subprime and Alt-A originations in the U.S. rose from less than 8% of all mortgages in 2003 to over 20% in 2006. During this period the quality of subprime loans also declined, going from fixed rate, long-term amortizing loans to loans with low down payments and low (but adjustable) initial rates, indicating that originators were scraping the bottom of the barrel to find product for buyers like the GSEs.
Rather than rein in Fanni Mae and Freddie Mac, Obama has given them each a blank check in order that they can continue pumping money into risky mortgage loans. Meanwhile, he and Cuomo demonize the banking industry for what? Trying to satisfy the appetites of Fannie and Freddie? Obama will regulate. Cuomo will prosecute.
The Housing and Urban Development web page to which The Journal refers is here.
Comments