The main reason I want President Obama to win re-election in 2012 is because......

"what did the Democrats do in '07 and '08" They out spent the the first 6 years of Bush Jrs Presidency adding more debt in two years than the prior 6.
"Dems majority were elected in '06, but didn't take office until January, 07" No kidding. Did you assume I didn't know that?
Campaigning for something is not creating regulations... They are empty promises.

Sorry Gramm-Leach-Bliley came after the fact and had NADA to do with mortgage lending or the regulation of it.
• 1992. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac required to set aside percentage of lending to affordable housing. Affordable housing means that the home price is within the range of the median income. This, combined with the creation of CDOs, meant that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are organizations that purchase the mortgages from lenders, would just before the crisis began be holding a great amount of loans to poorer borrowers. (This is the de-regulation that caused the mortgage crisis)

• 1995. Changes to the Community Reinvestment Act allow mortgage lenders to receive credit toward their affordable-housing lending obligations for buying subprime securities. Subprime market grows. The subprime market allows poorer borrowers, who have a shorter history of obtaining loans, lower incomes, and fewer assets, to get a loan. These loans are much riskier because the borrower is much weaker. (This is MORE of the de-regulation that caused the mortgage crisis)

• 1997. Huge growth in number of mortgage-backed securities purchased by investors. Home prices were increasing starting in 1997, which meant that investors felt that these were reliable investments.

• 1999, 09. Fannie Mae eases credit requirements for subprime loans. This was done to help low-income consumers purchase homes, and it further encouraged weak borrowers to obtain home loans. (Prior to GLB Act being passed)

"Fanny and Freddie stopped issuing sub-prime mortgages in 2003." REALLY?? They NEVER issued them, lenders did. F&F; insured them and brokered them.

• 2002. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac start purchasing large amounts of subprime mortgages.

• 2002. Home price appreciation begins. Home prices began to appreciate as investors took their money out of the bottoming stock market and put it into real estate. Demand for housing grew as both these investors and individuals, particularly subprime borrowers, purchased homes, driving up prices.

• 2004. Financial institutions start to issue huge amounts of mortgage-backed securities. This was due a combination of factors that made securities more profitable, especially after leveraging restrictions were lifted, allowing securities priced at many times the underlying value to be issued.

You did know that it was Clinton the legislated the right for the Feds to use the SS surplus in lieu of general funds which is the only reason why he had a smoke and mirrors surplus. How could he have a budget surplus yet at the same time build the debt that he did?? The money taken from SS never came out of his budget but went straight to the debt.

Your not really up on what is going on in your world are you?
Here, maybe this will help you understand the gap between the top 10% and the 90% and which party is ACTUALLY more to blame. Keep in mind which party is in control of Congress and what the debt is doing...
http://motherjones.com/politi...

"They out spent the the first 6 years of Bush Jrs Presidency adding more debt in two years than the prior 6."
You're kidding, right? You realize, don't you that the House cannot pass any legislation on their own? You know how our government works, right? The House can't spend a dime unless the bill goes to the Senate for passage and then to the President for his signature for it to become law. From 2001 to 2006, the national debt increased by $3 trillion. In 2007 and 2008, it increased by $2 trillion.

"• 1992. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac .........(This is the de-regulation that caused the mortgage crisis)"
"• 1995. Changes to the Community Reinvestment Act allow mortgage lenders to receive credit toward their affordable-housing lending obligations......."
http://www.businessweek.com/i...
"Community Reinvestment Act had nothing to do with subprime crisis"
Posted by: Aaron Pressman on September 29, 2008

"Fresh off the false and politicized attack on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, today we’re hearing the know-nothings blame the subprime crisis on the Community Reinvestment Act — a 30-year-old law that was actually weakened by the Bush administration just as the worst lending wave began. This is even more ridiculous than blaming Freddie and Fannie."
...
"Finally, keep in mind that the Bush administration has been weakening CRA enforcement and the law’s reach since the day it took office. The CRA was at its strongest in the 1990s, under the Clinton administration, a period when subprime loans performed quite well. It was only after the Bush administration cut back on CRA enforcement that problems arose, a timing issue which should stop those blaming the law dead in their tracks. The Federal Reserve, too, did nothing but encourage the wild west of lending in recent years. It wasn’t until the middle of 2007 that the Fed decided it was time to crack down on abusive pratices in the subprime lending market. Oops."

If you want some real reasons, not politically cherry picked ones, then these are some of the main causes:


2000: The Commodities Futures Modernization Act defined financial commodities such as "interest rates, currency prices, and stock indexes" as "excluded commodities." They could trade off the futures exchanges, with minimal oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Neither the Securities and Exchange Commission, nor the Federal Reserve, nor any state insurance regulators had the ability to supervise or regulate the writing of credit-default swaps by hedge funds, investment banks or insurance companies.

2001-'03: Alan Greenspan's Fed dropped federal-fund rates to 1%. Lulled into a false belief that inflation was not a problem, the Fed then kept rates at 1% for more than a year. This set off an inflationary spiral in housing, and a desperate hunt for yield by fixed-income managers.

2003-'07: The Federal Reserve failed to use its supervisory and regulatory authority over banks, mortgage underwriters and other lenders, who abandoned such standards as employment history, income, down payments, credit rating, assets, property loan-to-value ratio and debt-servicing ability. The borrower's ability to repay these mortgages was replaced with the lender's ability to securitize and repackage them.

2004: The SEC waived its leverage rules. Previously, broker/dealer net-capital rules limited firms to a maximum debt-to-net-capital ratio of 12 to 1. This 2004 exemption allowed them to exceed this leverage rule. Only five firms -- Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley -- were granted this exemption; they promptly levered up 20, 30 and even 40 to 1.

2005-'07: Unscrupulous home appraisers found that they could attract more business by inflating appraisals. Intrinsic value was ignored, so referrals kept coming in. This helped borrowers obtain financing at prices that were increasingly unsupportable. When honest appraisers petitioned both Congress and the bureaucracy to intervene in the widespread fraud, neither branch of government acted.


Republicans have been famous for deregulating every industry they can, including the financial industry, and they are still trying to do it today. If they win the White House and regain a majority in the Senate, my five stated fears will come to pass.

You are entitled to your own opinions, and you can blame everything that's wrong that's happened to this country on Obama for the last decade if you want, but you are only deluding yourself. President Obama is not responsible for the worst recession since the great depression. When he took office, the national debt was at $10.625 trillions, and the interest on that debt was more than a billion dollars a day. GDP growth was at -4.5% for 1st qtr. 2009, and at -5% for 2nd qtr. President Bush signed the TARP bailouts in October, 2008, but everybody wants to blame it on Obama and the increase to the national debt. In 2008, health care in this country was 16% of GDP, or $2.3 trillions a year, and the only plan the Republicans had to address the problems was a health care savings account - which did nothing to address the increasing costs. By 2014, 20 cents of every dollar spent in this country will go to health care - and this country has the most expensive health care system in the world, yet there are 45 other countries that have better infant mortality rates than that of the US. Something had to be done, and President Obama took the initiative to do it, and he got it done in 14 months and 2 days.

You better get used to another 4 years of President Obama, because the Republicans don't have a candidate that can defeat him in 2012. That would require a candidate that would be more popular than Ronald Reagan was in 1984, and Romney or Cain or Perry won't even come close to setting all US Presidential election records. They would have to increase their vote count from 2008 by at least 29%, or more than 17 million more votes.