Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending – New York Times

Posted on by Mike 2 Comments

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending – New York Times.

You may want to hop over and read the linked article by Steven A. Holmes published September 30, 1999. In it Steven Holmes reports that Fannie Mae’s previous year portfolio contained 44% of its loans from low to moderate-income borrowers (subprime loans).

Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits…. In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers.

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.

”From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”

I guess we did know about this financial meltdown years ago. Hmmm.

Spirituality

Posted on by Mike 3 Comments

I haven’t blogged in a while. Don’t have any thoughts organized so here’s a quote from Through Gates of Splendor which I recently read;

“It is not the level of our spirituality that we can depend on. It is God and nothing less than God, for the work is God’s and the call is God’s and everything is summoned by Him and to His purposes, the whole scene, the whole mess, the whole package–our bravery and our cowardice, our love and our selfishness, our strengths and our weaknesses.” — Elisabeth Elliot

Recent Thoughts

Posted on by Mike 2 Comments

I’ve been trying to decide what to make of Barack Obama’s acceptance speech a week ago Thursday before the Democratic National Convention.

First let me say that I thought the speech was dynamite. Obama is a first class orator and he was superb in his delivery. And even though he was criticized by some for lack of detail in his plans, I thought he had plenty of detail for an acceptance speech.

Like others, my first view of Obama was during his keynote address to the DNC in 2004. His message of “were all Americans” was inspiring. I thought, “This guy is destined for great things in politics.” I admired his bent to statesmanship instead of the same old party politics that punctuates most political activities. Good idea. Let’s cooperate and accomplish the stuff that America needs. Let’s all do it together.

Four years later and some of the idealism and statesmanship have been traded for the politics of getting elected. I understand the need for this, yet I long for the old Obama. And I don’t hold this against him. I hope, that if he is elected, he can return to his place as one who calls for us to rise above ourselves for the good of America.