You know Buddy from your description of the warnings ignored, a lot of the blame should fall on Bush. He consistently backed mealy mouthed moderates and liberals no matter what, but would quickly sack a conservative who raised any kind of a ruckus. Bush seemed always afraid of vigorous debate and effectively submarined conservatives who wanted one. In that kind of environment, it’s no wonder that big problems were consistently swept under the rug. Ya sure he raised the issue a few times, but never forcefully. He never expended any political capital fighting Fannie and Freddie like he did for immigration reform or Social Security reform.

Changing the reserve requirements from 12 to 1, to 30 or 40 to 1 without a big debate, ( and there obviously wasn’t one) just fries me.

To my dumb way of thinking, the S&L crisis was really about the same thing; the feds let S&L’s exist with lesser reserve requirements than Banks long after the S&L’s Reg Q advantage was long gone. So the crooks got to be like kids in a candy store with the S&L’s. Same thing happened with Fannie and Freddie. History kinda sorta repeated itself but in unfortunately a much bigger way.