It's about time the housing bubble was blamed on Cuomo ( and also Frank and Dodd.._)

****Today ( and, if you pay attention, you'll hear this refrain over and over again from liberals speaking what they consider universally-accepted truth) a knee-jerker started a rant with "Everyone should own a home. It's the American Dream. Fannie and Freddie are essential for this." Actually, none of these things is necessary or even true.Not every should, or even wants to, own a home. Renting provides flexibility, leaves maintenance responsibilities to others and, over many periods, is economically advantageous. A good life might be the American Dream and an apartment renter with color TVs and two cars is hardly divorced from this idea. Since ownership entails financial risks, the necessity of Fannie and Freddie is clearly less obvious than our liberal friends would like to pretend.

New York's Paladino blames Cuomo for housing bubble By Daniel Trotta and Edith Honan
Thu Oct 21, 2010 7:08pm EDTNEW YORK (Reuters) - Carl Paladino, the Republican candidate for governor of New York, blames the U.S. housing bubble that triggered the global financial crisis on a single person -- his Democratic opponent, Andrew Cuomo.
"The housing bubble occurred because of one man -- that was Andrew Cuomo," Paladino told Reuters in an interview on Thursday.
Paladino linked the bubble to policies carried out by Cuomo when he was housing and urban development secretary during Democratic President Bill Clinton's second term from 1997 to 2001.
Paladino, a Buffalo real estate developer with support from the conservative Tea Party movement, faces Cuomo, the state attorney general and son of former Governor Mario Cuomo, in the November 2 election. Paladino, who won an upset victory in the Republican primary, trails Cuomo in most polls.
Paladino has livened up the New York governor's race with a series of colorful comments, including some he has apologized for or admitted were mistakes -- a trend that has coincided with his drop in opinion polls.
He held Cuomo individually responsible for the housing bubble by pressuring the Federal Housing Authority and housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to promote greater home ownership by reducing mortgage standards.
That political goal, he said, was the main reason banks offered millions of mortgages to unqualified buyers, who later defaulted and left the financial system in tatters.
Cuomo's campaign did not immediately respond to calls and an e-mail seeking comment.
Paladino cited former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in his case against Cuomo.
"How did we get into this thing? We got into it by one man. And Alan Greenspan said it. The housing bubble started the subprime meltdown. How did the housing bubble occur? Andrew Cuomo, for his own self-interest, laid on FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to lower their standards," Paladino said.
"He ... was so proud of saying, 'Yes, every American is going to own a home," Paladino told a panel of Reuters reporters.
Greenspan and others have made the link between the housing bubble and the subprime mortgage crisis, and the federal policy of promoting home ownership under Clinton has received some blame.
Experts have cited a number of other reasons for the bubble, including the long period of low interest rates the Fed maintained after the recession of 2001 and the securitization of mortgages into financial instruments by the banks.
Millions of unqualified buyers subsequently lost their homes when they were unable to make their payments.
"The poor people that did that, they bought a home, they took out these mortgages, now all of a sudden they're learning about adjustable rate," Paladino said. "They never understood that. You can't explain that to the normal everyday Joe."
****It was an unholy alliance of HUD Secretary Cuomo, Cong. Barney Frank and Senator Chris Dodd as the salient malefactors, although they hardly take responsibiity.****
Is Barney Frank? By Thomas Sowell
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | You would be hard pressed to find a politician who is less frank than Congressman Barney Frank. Even in an occupation where truth and candor are often lacking, Congressman Frank is in a class by himself when it comes to rewriting history in creative ways. Moreover, he has a lot of history to rewrite in his re-election campaign this year.
No one contributed more to the policies behind the housing boom and bust, which led to the economic disaster we are now in, than Congressman Barney Frank.
His powerful position on the House of Representatives' Committee on Financial Services gave him leverage to force through legislation and policies which pressured banks and other lenders to grant mortgage loans to people who would not qualify under the standards which had long prevailed, and had long made mortgage loans among the safest investments around.
All this was done in the name of promoting more home-ownership among people who had neither the income nor the credit history that would meet traditional mortgage lending standards.
To those who warned of the risks in the new policies, Congressman Frank replied in 2003 that critics "exaggerate a threat of safety" and "conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see." Far from being reluctant to promote risky practices, Barney Frank said, "I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation."
Every weekday NewsAOpinion.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". HUNDREDS of columnists and cartoonists regularly appear.
With the federal regulators leaning on banks to make more loans to people who did not meet traditional qualifications — the "underserved population" in political Newspeak — and quotas being given to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy more of these riskier mortgages from the original lenders, critics pointed out the dangers in these pressures to meet arbitrary home ownership goals. But Barney Frank counter-attacked against these critics.
In 2004 he said: "I believe that we, as the Federal Government, have probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing." He went further: "I would like to get Fannie and Freddie more deeply into helping low-income housing."
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were crucial to these schemes to force lenders to lend to those whom politicians wanted them to lend to, rather than to those who were most likely to pay them back. So it is no surprise that Barney Frank was very protective towards these two government-sponsored enterprises that were buying up mortgages that banks were willing to make under political pressure, but were often unwilling to keep.
The risks which banks were passing on to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were ultimately risks to the taxpayers. Although there was no formal guarantee to these enterprises, everybody knew that the federal government would always bail them out, if necessary, to keep them from failing. Everybody except Barney Frank.
"There is no guarantee," according Congressman Frank in 2003, "there is no explicit guarantee, there is no implicit guarantee, there is no wink-and-nod guarantee." Barney Frank is a master of rhetoric, who does not let the facts cramp his style.
Fast forward now to 2008, after the risky mortgages had led to huge numbers of defaults, dragging down Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the financial markets in general — and with them the whole economy.
Barney Frank was all over the media, pointing the finger of blame at everybody else. When financial analyst Maria Bartiromo asked Congressman Frank who was responsible for the financial crisis, he said, "right-wing Republicans." It so happens that conservatives were the loudest critics who had warned for years against the policies that Barney Frank pushed, but why let facts get in the way?
Ms. Bartiromo did not just accept whatever Barney Frank said. She said: "With all due respect, congressman, I saw videotapes of you saying in the past: 'Oh, let's open up the lending. The housing market is fine.'" His reply? "No, you didn't see any such tapes."
"I did. I saw them on TV," she said. But Barney Frank did not budge. He understood that a good offense is the best defense. He also understands that rewriting history this election year is his best bet for keeping his long political career alive.
****Barney is a real-life version of Groucho Marx: "Are you going to believe me or your own lying eyes?"****