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You can bet the The Vast Right wing conspiracy controlling the MSM has ignored this because it was Bush's fault, even though Bill Clinton tried to be polite and say it was his. To this day the racist right wing claims a Smoking-Gun Document Ties Policy To Housing Crisis. This the story, of a president named Clinton, who ordered banks to make shaky sub prime loans... Rewind to 1994. That year, the federal government declared war on an enemy the racist lender who officials claimed was to blame for differences in home ownership rate, and launched what would prove the costliest social crusade in U.S. history. At President Clinton's direction, no fewer than 10 federal agencies issued a chilling ultimatum to banks and mortgage lenders to ease credit for lower-income minorities or face investigations for lending discrimination and suffer the related adverse publicity. They also were threatened with denial of access to the all-important secondary mortgage market and stiff fines, along with other penalties. Clinton set up the little-known body to coordinate an unprecedented crackdown on alleged bank redlining with the "Policy Statement on Discrimination in Lending" The unusual full-court press was predicated on a Boston Fed study showing mortgage lenders rejecting blacks and Hispanics in greater proportion than whites. The author of the 1992 study, hired by the Clinton White House, claimed it was racial "discrimination." But it was simply good underwriting. When these missing data were factored in, it became clear that the rejection rates were based on legitimate business decisions, not racism. Still, the study was used to support a wholesale abandonment of traditional underwriting standards the root cause of the mortgage crisis. Banks that failed to throw open their lending windows to credit-poor minorities were denied expansion plans by the Fed in an era of frenzied financial mergers and acquisitions. HUD threatened to deny them access to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which it controlled. And the Justice Department sued them for lending discrimination and branded them as racists in the press.

"HUD is authorized to direct Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to undertake various remedial actions, including suspension, probation, reprimand or settlement, against lenders found to have engaged in discriminatory lending practices," the official policy statement warned.

The regulatory missive, which had the effect of law, advised lenders to bend "customary" underwriting standards for minority homebuyers with poor credit.

"Applying different lending standards to applicants who are members of a protected class is permissible," it said. "In addition, providing different treatment to applicants to address past discrimination would be permissible."

To that end, lenders were directed to "make changes in marketing strategy or loan products to better serve minority segments of the market." They were also advised to "change commission structures" to encourage brokers and loan officers to "lend in minority and low-income neighborhoods" a practice Countrywide Financial, the poster boy of the subprime scandal, perfected. The government now condemns the practice it once encouraged as "predatory." FDIC warned banks that even unintentional discrimination was against the law, and that they should be proactive in making "multicultural" loans. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," the agency said in a separate advisory. lenders naturally toed the line, and were soon aggressively marketing subprime mortgages in the hood. The marching orders threw such a scare into the industry that the American Bankers Association issued a "fair-lending tool kit" to every member. It warned lenders who rejected minority applicants with high debt ratios and low credit scores to "be prepared" to prove to federal regulators and prosecutors they weren't racist. Even tomorrow, Dec. 23, They continue to rave about it. Our wish is that all you pro FF readers out there, disregard reading the articles and immediately start attacking Bill Clinton, me, the alternate ego Big T, Gramps The Baron, the sources, and writers of these Wall Street Journal and similar pieces.