see how cons cant even get the simple details right? and then they want you to believe their convoluted 'explanations' to prove nothing is Bush or the republicans fault. As upsideguy pointed out, dems didnt take over until 2007. Not that it mattered when they took over because the once the Bush Mortgage Bubble popped it was too late. Well lucky for the dems, the Bush Mortgage Bubble popped before they took over
The Subprime Mortgage Market Collapse: A Primer on the Causes and Possible Solutions
The collapse of the subprime mortgage market in late 2006 set in motion a chain reaction of economic and financial adversity that has spread to global financial markets, created depression-like conditions in the housing market, and pushed the U.S. economy to the brink of recession.
I never fell into the trap of the "MY house is my piggy bank" thinking. Many did, however, and others took loans knowing they were on the razor's edge to pay them back.
It is impossible to place the blame for this whole problem on any doorstep that does not include the entire population of folks who gave or took loans for any type of property and that's just about everybody in the USA. The whole thing represents the something for nothing mind set that the children of the Depression who raised me told me would not work.
WC Fields warned that you can't cheat an honest man.
From your link:
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Impact on the Housing Market
Giving less creditworthy borrowers access to mortgage credit increased the U.S. homeownership rate by more than 4 percentage points during this rapid expansion of subprime mortgages. In 1995, just when the subprime market was starting to expand, the homeownership rate was 64.7 percent of households-comparable to the average rate for the preceding three decades. However, as the subprime mortgage market grew, so did homeownership, which reached an all-time peak of 69 percent in 2004.[23]
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Predatory Lenders, Predatory Borrowers. For much of the past decade, some in Congress and the advocacy community have complained about the prevalence of "predatory lending," a practice in which individuals of modest means and limited sophistication are seduced into taking on debt, often secured by their home. Some define predatory lending as occurring when the lender convinces the borrower to borrow "too much." Sometimes, outright fraud is involved, and the nature of the obligations is misrepresented. In other cases, individuals may willingly agree to a loan that carries high interest rates, large fees, and harsh terms that are beyond their capability to service with their modest incomes and financial skills, hoping that something will work out in the future. Some fall behind in their payments and ultimately lose their homes through foreclosure.
For some debtor advocates, subprime loans are synonymous with predatory lending because they typically carry higher interest rates and fees to compensate lenders for the additional risk of default that they assume by lending to such borrowers. As noted earlier, the many definitions and characteristics of a subprime loan relate entirely to the lackluster credit history of the borrower. While there have certainly been instances of fraud, there is little evidence to suggest that they constitute a significant component of the subprime problem nationally, although there are instances of localized abuses. The high foreclosure and default rates in low-cost Atlanta and Detroit may be examples of such abuses.
In contrast, as more evidence emerges from the millions of faltering mortgagors (subprime, Alt-A, and/or prime), it is becoming apparent that some portion of the problem -- perhaps a significant portion -- may stem from "predatory borrowing," defined as a transaction in which the borrower convinces the lender to lend too much. As underwriting standards declined and as this decline became obvious to many in the real estate business, some people took advantage of the lax standards to buy homes that they could not otherwise afford, to refinance homes to acquire other consumer durables or pay down credit card debt, or to buy homes for investment (renting or selling) without revealing that the homes were not their primary residences.
