Fault improper loans for economy

Regarding Mark Weisbrot's July 14 guest column, “Unfettering business will keep us in recession”: The effect is correct, but the genesis of the crisis was omitted. History is easy to ignore.

There is much blame to share in our financial crisis, but the seed of this financial catastrophe was sown in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter signing the Community Reinvestment Act into law - home loans to unqualified buyers. The premise: Homeownership would improve poor and crime-ridden communities and neighborhoods in terms of crime, investment, jobs, etc. But, it did not work and turned into another tale of unintended consequences, and it grew from there with the help of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, who kept saying that there was nothing wrong with Fannie and Freddie and blocked attempts to reform these companies.

President Bill Clinton said that the Democrats blocked any attempts to reform or re-regulate Fannie and Freddie. President George W. Bush called for reform of Fannie and Freddie (see URL below), but again, Democrats (mainly Frank) blocked any attempts to fix it. So now we have this financial crisis on our hands and to correct all the mistakes made up to now will take monumental efforts to right all the wrongs.

The following URL address shows that Bush warned Congress, starting in 2001, that this economic crisis was coming: youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4q

EXNM&NR=1.

There are many more references to support this that may be found on the Internet.

Robert Larsen

Cedar Rapids