From The New York Times…

…so you know it’s true. And as if it’ll matter:

September 30, 1999

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending

By STEVEN A. HOLMES

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.
”Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990’s by reducing down payment requirements,” said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae’s chairman and chief executive officer. ”Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.”
Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.
”From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”
Under Fannie Mae’s pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 — a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.
Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.

“Consent Is Puberty”…

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,428241,00.html

Why is it that all these “evangelists” have bottle-blonde, over-made up wives that look like rejects from a “Sexy Seniors” porn film (so I hear)?

(Soliciting captions for this horror pic now)

No further comment on these people necessary, I hope.

What I Wanna Know Is…

…who is the chick in the dark blue dress sitting back on the floor at the left at 3:00 in the morning in an imaginary Obama white house?

McCain can’t use a computer, they say*, but Obama can’t use a phone.

*What they don’t say is that the reason he cannot is because his POW injuries prevent him from assuming a keyboard-friendly position for any length of time. Which is fine, as long as he can push that big red button.

This Month’s Sign Of The Apocalypse…

http://www.wnbc.com/news/17539627/detail.html

Soliciting names for this delightful confection now! I’ll start:

1. Your Granny’s Mammaries

2. No Shit! It’s From A Tit!

3. Gnarly Charlies

4. Boob Scoops

5. A Carton From Parton

The “Gaffe-O-Matic”…

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/09/23/biden-turns-on-the-gaffe-machine.aspx

Nice coin of phrase by Romano, and in a related story:

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/24/biden-dropping-out-rumor-thrives-on-internet/

Also, http://www.gop.com/BidenGaffeClock/

Old Shrew, Old Dirt…

…but it sure is interesting reading, and old dirt is still dirt, often dirtier than the new:

http://www.anncoulter.org/

Irish Is Right…

Good Old Bucky Biden…

Joe Biden’s

denunciation of his own campaign’s ad to Katie Couric got so much attention last night that another odd note in the interview slipped by.

He was speaking about the role of the White House in a financial crisis.

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed,” Biden told Couric. “He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’”

As Reason’s Jesse Walker footnotes it: “And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, ‘Who is that guy? What happened to President Hoover?’”—Ben Smith

“Humor” Hits A New Low…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRXQ2ZueP5c

Can you imagine the outrage if, e.g., Dennis Miller suggested that Barack Obama

was screwing one of his daughters?

If the sophisticates at SNL find that funny, maybe they’ll get a charge out of this:

Obama’s Latest Strategy…

As Always, Chuck Gets It Right…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/18/AR2008091803049.html

Just Because…

Could Happen…

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2008/09/15/desperate-huffpo-blogger-its-time-dump-biden-replace-him-sen-hillary-c

“A Rock That Has The Most Incredible Life…”

http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/15394/

Will someone please shoot me, or am I gonna have to do it myself? Wait, I have a life; these lunatics do not. Shoot them instead.

It’s Hard To Say…

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/091708dnspomavslede.112d818.html

…who’s the bigger asshole here. Howard or Cuban?

Jump ball.