“NYT’s Krugman Accuses Bloomberg of ‘Swallowing Right-Wing Propaganda Whole’ After He Blames Congress For Mortgage Crisis…” the Weasel Zippers write today.
OK, if not Congress, how ’bout President Clinton?
In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets — including the New York metropolitan region — will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.
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 addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates — anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.
If you’d like to swallow that example of Right-Wing Propaganda whole, just click over for this 1999 page at…Krugman’s employer, The New York Times.
(Which come to think of it, from Krugman’s point of view, compared with his own radical chic populist out there on the bleeding edge of the left stylings, he probably does think of his employer — those little one percent bastards! I’m sure Krugman thinks from time to time — as being right-wing propaganda.)
Oh, and just for fun:
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