^^^You're both trying to make this so black and white. There's plenty of blame to go around.
Here's a few comments directly from Barney Frank:
(snip)Dealey then cites comments I made in 2003 that the GSEs are not in trouble as evidence that I did not support reform. Wrong. I supported reform then, I support reform now and I delivered.
Dealey also fails to report that the Bush Administration did not support the reform efforts of Republican former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Mike Oxley, who recently told the Financial Times that the White House gave him "the one-finger salute" for his efforts to bring about GSE reform.
I also supported—with major opposition from the Bush Administration and their conservative Congressional allies—a tough federal law against predatory lending, and I urged then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to write regulations based on the Home Owners Equity Protection Act passed by a Democratic Congress in 1994. Those regulations would have outlawed many of the irresponsible lending practices that fueled the housing bubble and now threaten the entire economy. His successor, Ben Bernanke, issued these regulations last July after seeing the economically disastrous impact of an unregulated market.
If we had a predatory lending law and had Greenspan acted on authority he was given, we might have avoided the subprime crisis entirely. The Democratic majority also delivered, with the help of our Committee's Ranking Member, Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), on a mortgage reform and anti-predatory lending law in 2007.
In addition, the author points to the fact that I voted against GSE reform in 2005, but does not tell readers why. The Republican majority inserted language at the last minute that would prohibit religious organizations from participating. The Catholic and Lutheran churches, and many others, sponsor some of the best not- for-profit housing development organizations in the country. It is only because of this ridiculous action by arch-conservative Republicans that I cast my vote "no". It was not because I was opposed to tougher regulations and oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The House Financial Services Committee, which I chair, moved aggressively after we took over as the majority party in January, 2007, and passed GSE Reform in March of 2007. We worked cooperatively with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to strengthen the bill and the full house voted for GSE reform in early May 2007. I also proposed to Secretary Paulson that we include GSE reform in the stimulus package passed by Congress in January 2008, but he declined, citing problems with the White House with this approach. Now, thanks to the efforts of the Democratic majority, and thanks to the work of former-Chairman Mike Oxley, President Bush can finally count GSE reform as an accomplishment. (snip)
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/sam-deal...eddie-mac.html
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