Exactly, Chris. And it began in '93 when Clinton single-handedly rewrote the Fannie and Freddie rules leading into his 1994 initiative called the "National Home-Ownership Strategy." This only exacerbated the already huge problems created by Carter's "Community Reinvestment Act."
The Clinton admin then again in '95 rewrote the rules via Robert Rubin's treasury department that created and forced lenders to satisfy quotas for sub-prime minority loans in order to get a satisfactory a CRA rating. Without meeting these quotas, banks wouldn't qualify for the multitudes of governmental capital re-investment opportunities.
As if this wasn't enough, in '97 Clinton and Cuomo lowered the requirement for the ratio of available liquid assets to liabilities for Freddie & Fannie to 2.5% (but ordinary banks needed 10%). So naturally, this is when F&F begin pouring ungodly amounts of money into poor areas on loans that required no money down and no verification of income…a recipe for disaster.
It’s no wonder that 384 politicians got big campaign donations from F&F (over $200million in campaign contributions).
Well, guess what? 15 years later 48% of the 12.5 million new homeowners (mostly minorities) were sitting on interest only and ARM loan with no possible means of repayment.