Did the Community Reinvestment Act ruin Belgium too?

Conservatives continue to try to blame the housing collapse and Wall Street’s subsequent crisis on governmental regulations such as the Community Reinvestment Act. But as I’ve pointed out in the past, there are a lot of flaws in that argument, among them this:

Sept09_CF1

Source: McKinsey & Co., h/t to Barry Ritholtz at Big Picture

How did the CRA affect lending policies in Belgium or Ireland? How did that devious Barney Frank somehow finagle Fannie Mae into also destroying the housing market in Spain and the UK?

Or was this global phenomenon driven by something global in nature, such as international banking and financial institutions that went on a wild lending spree in search ever higher profits and fees, until it all became unsustainable?

You tell me.

– Jay Bookman

404 comments Add your comment

moonbat betty

November 15th, 2011
3:49 pm

Keep Up the Good Fight!

November 15th, 2011
3:51 pm

Dang it Jay….. You know Barney Frank is an international star!

HDB

November 15th, 2011
3:52 pm

People know that the CRA did NOTHING but require the banks to LEND in the communities that they SERVE!! It did NOT require them to change the lending STANDARDS!! When mortgage brokers went “bottom-feeding” to attract the sub-prime mortgage candidates, THEY changed the lending requirements….not the banks!!

Granny Godzilla

November 15th, 2011
3:56 pm

That there Barney sure does get around….

josef

November 15th, 2011
3:58 pm

JAY

Son, your graph is awful purty, but hits too bizzy, Ain’t nobody gonna read it. See me after school let’s out… :-)

Belgium? Just ain’t gonna let Newt drop ere you? :-)

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
4:02 pm

No, Jay, It was the little guy who couldn’t pay the ARM.

Schrodinger's cat

November 15th, 2011
4:02 pm

what does the price of housing have to do with …well.. anything?

Stonethrower

November 15th, 2011
4:03 pm

And it wasn’t the poor and minorities that caused the housing market to collapse as some would have you believe.

josef

November 15th, 2011
4:03 pm

Oh, and how did Barney Frank pull this one off? Ask Sooth (left) or TruthBe (right) and you’ll know…he’s up in the caba with the International Zionist Hoodlum bankers!

Soothsayer
November 12th, 2011
6:16 pm

TruthBe
November 14th, 2011
9:21 pm

Armed Liberal

November 15th, 2011
4:03 pm

Teh gay is strong and panatlantic.

A lizard told me.

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
4:04 pm

Schrodinger’s cat 4:02 it has to do with where many people sleep at night…

St Simons - we're on Island time

November 15th, 2011
4:07 pm

don’t forget the unregulated derivatives here, which are illegal in most

of the countries to the right of the graph

read em & weep cons – all you got is grunt words & dog whistles

Schrodinger's cat

November 15th, 2011
4:07 pm

frog…all that graph shows is the global fluctuation in the price of housing over a 40 yr span…so what?
how does that tie in to Barney, Freddie, and Fannie…or anything?

Mick

November 15th, 2011
4:08 pm

I had a belgium sheppard once, that dog was as crazy as they come. Eventually he was killed trying to chase a train…

josef

November 15th, 2011
4:11 pm

I like Belgian chocolates.

ByteMe

November 15th, 2011
4:12 pm

Ritholtz nailed it in a WaPo editorial two Sunday’s ago:

The Big Lie

Keep Up the Good Fight!

November 15th, 2011
4:12 pm

Uh oh…. cat may yet stumble onto the real point. He’s getting closer. If he reads the article and not just look at the graph, he might figure it out. :lol:

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
4:12 pm

cat 4:07 the rapid falling housing prices are the result of many losing
their homes, sarcasm ties it to the rest …

moonbat betty

November 15th, 2011
4:13 pm

What would the Portuguese water dog do?

carlosgvv

November 15th, 2011
4:13 pm

The number one priority of Republicans is to support their Business sponsors in every way possible. Therefore, even though it’s obvious that Business greed is the main cause of the housing collapse and Wall Street crisis, Republicans must look straight into the cameras and unashamedly lie about the true causes and, instead, blame it on governmental regulations. This “don’t bite the hand that feeds you” action on their part is understanbable but how they have somehow managed to fool their electorate so long is beyond understanding.

TaxPayer

November 15th, 2011
4:14 pm

Why everyone knows it was them 47 percenters that don’t pay taxes but got loans to buy half million dollar houses just by walking into a bank and saying “Barney sent me!” Them’s the ones that ruined us.

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
4:14 pm

Mick 4:08 It doesn’t seem he would have been killed unless
he actually succeeded in catching the train….

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
4:17 pm

moonbat betty 4:13 a Portugues water b…h.

Hank Paulson

November 15th, 2011
4:17 pm

I agree.
.
We had nothing to do with it.
Now stop whining and give us more money.
We are doing God’s work.

ByteMe

November 15th, 2011
4:17 pm

And, Jay, you’re not going to somehow fix the “cognitive dissidents” amongst us with more data. They have a belief system bordering on religious faith when it comes to the misinformation they hold to be true. But this does give us something else to use to laugh at them.

Jefferson

November 15th, 2011
4:18 pm

They made the banks make them loans, and they belive it.

Brad Steel

November 15th, 2011
4:18 pm

But I heard on the radio that it was the insidious gay politics of “stuttering Barney” and “Princess Nancy.” Certainly those derisive titles mean that they are bad people who do bad things via Freddie and Fannie, their agency minions.

md

November 15th, 2011
4:20 pm

“Did the Community Reinvestment Act ruin Belgium too?”

Good question, according to your chart, Belgium doesn’t go back down……

Where’s the rest of the numbers?

pogo

November 15th, 2011
4:22 pm

Belgium for godsake? They have a population of 10 million and they are about the size of Maryland! You seem to be in some kind of self-induced/hyper-liberal frenzied state today Jay. Are your handlers paying you by the number of liberal propaganda posts you put out each day? You seem to be trying to blind with statistics and minutia gleamed from liberal sources to make your point that all things progressive are magnificent and that all things conservative are bad, bad, bad. One wonders if you really thinks things are just this clear cut and if you do, it makes you a POLITICAL HACK! If you don’t, and you put this garbage out everyday anyway, it makes you a hypocrit. Of course, it makes your liberal regulars here happy but it isn’t going to change anyone elses mind. You are the equivalent of a hard-shell preacher in a small and fanatical church Jay. You can whip the congregation of loyal followers into a leftist frenzy like nobodys business but you are speaking to only a few people. Most people in this state ignore you as they should.

AmVet

November 15th, 2011
4:22 pm

Forget their chocolates and their waffles.

That little country makes the best beers in the world.

(Sure glad those old Trappist monks had lots of time on their hands to contemplate their navels and make some kickass brew!)

Strawman

November 15th, 2011
4:23 pm

Does the graph show anything other than that there is a correlation (by inference from other facts) between the price of houses and the state of the economy for any given country? It suggests nothing about causes and effects. Greed and deception are, I believe, the primary reasons for the housing boom and collapse in America. But to suggest that Frank, Dodd, the Maes and others have no responsibility in what happened is disingenuous I think.

Jimmy62

November 15th, 2011
4:24 pm

Let me ask this then: If it was all Wall Street, why did first Bush, and then Obama bail them out? Wall Street would have gotten what was coming to them had first Bush, and then Obama to a much larger degree saved them. So why are you pushing Obama so much? Are you hoping that his support of Wall Street will lead to another financial crisis where more taxpayer dollars can be funneled to Wall Street, and Goldman Sachs in particular (one of Obama’s biggest donators).

Or is you “anger” really completely partisan and all about getting your guy elected, even though he’s the pet of the very people you say caused this?

Housing prices are driven up by demand. Banks don’t create demand for housing, people do, people like you and me who fooled themselves, people whose education failed to teach them critical thinking skills.

But the formost cause of all of this is the Fed keeping rates too low too long. None of this would have happened if they had risen the target rate to 5% or so back in 2003 instead of keeping it low to help put the job back in “jobless” recovery. Of course that “jobless’ recovery was only 5% unemployment, and if not for the left and the media pushing the jobless recovery meme, the Fed might not have felt the pressure to keep rates down, and the housing mess would never have happened.

As far as Belgium and Spain goes, that’s a ridiculous argument, as most of the rest of the world follows our lead. If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were buying up every US subprime they could and everyone seemed to be making money over here, why couldn’t the Belgians? They just copied us, including a bunch of people deciding to get mortgages they couldn’t afford.

It’s too bad in this media-heavy world that our school system doesn’t teach kids critical thinking. Had they had some of that, more people might have realized that a deal that seems to good to be true probably is. I blame the banks somewhat, but you refuse to put any blame on the people who signed on the dotted line, but without people who makes deals having to take responsibility for those deals, we might as well shut down the country now, because it won’t continue for long if only big companies are required to honor their agreements (except of course they weren’t because Bush and then more so Obama bailed them out).

Brosephus

November 15th, 2011
4:24 pm

Switzerland, Norway, and Belgium appear to going counter to the other countries. When you get involved in global commerce and global markets, you suffer the reprecussions involved in doing so.

//drive-by//

Granny Godzilla

November 15th, 2011
4:25 pm

actually POGO, the definition for political hack would indicate that Jay is not a political hack.

however POGO, the definition of poltical crank fits you like a glove.

ain’t that a hoot.

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
4:25 pm

pogo 4:22 look in the mirror, substitute conservative for liberal and
read it to yourself. much truth will be contained therein…

jt

November 15th, 2011
4:26 pm

Unfortunently,,,,,,,the countries not under the spell of the government-CRA-enriched Goldman Sachs
or either……………
.
A) non existing through war-mongering…..or
.
B) our biggest creditor
.
weird.

Ross Perot

November 15th, 2011
4:26 pm

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
4:28 pm

Ross Perot, still got the hairdo?

jt

November 15th, 2011
4:30 pm

“We couldn’t have did it without them”
.
Quote from Goldman Sachs about the Federal government………….or vice versus…I forget which was which.
.
Not that it matters.

Ross Perot

November 15th, 2011
4:30 pm

Ross Perot

November 15th, 2011
4:32 pm

You can laugh at my ears, not my hair!

DebbieDoRight

November 15th, 2011
4:33 pm

read em & weep cons – all you got is grunt words & dog whistles

But they like grunt words and dog whistles. So there!

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
4:35 pm

jt, no reason that Paulson saved GS and dumped Lehman,
except he was a GS alumni and Lehman was heavily into financing
the European Union countries…economic war is hell, also…

md

November 15th, 2011
4:35 pm

“Housing prices are driven up by demand. Banks don’t create demand for housing, people do, people like you and me who fooled themselves, people whose education failed to teach them critical thinking skills.”

Agree with most of that……..the part about not teaching critical thinking…….many used that thinking to justify against what their heads were telling them was too good to be true………

The Vegas mentality…..or Mike Smith…….role the dice, I can’t lose this one………..

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
4:37 pm

ross perot, not laughing, just wondering why you dropped the
small patch mustasche under the nose when you entered politics?

AmVet

November 15th, 2011
4:37 pm

Judge orders New York to allow protesters, tents, in park

Our would be fascists here ain’t gonna like this…

md

November 15th, 2011
4:38 pm

role?………missing that critical thinking……….

DebbieDoRight

November 15th, 2011
4:39 pm

Housing prices are driven up by demand. Banks don’t create demand for housing, people do, people like you and me who fooled themselves, people whose education failed to teach them critical thinking skills.”

So what were the banks problem? Why are 60% of the ones in Georgia failing? is it because of the “poor” people?

Ross Perot

November 15th, 2011
4:40 pm

Did someone step on a frog in here?

AmVet

November 15th, 2011
4:40 pm

I’m still laughing at how meat thinks Perot was a Republican. Maybe someone should burst his bubble.

He ain’t. He’s just another super-rich flunky in the class warfare against the middle class…

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
4:42 pm

Did someone step in a frog on here?

md

November 15th, 2011
4:44 pm

And I’m still laughing at the middle class pointing the finger elsewhere when they are the ones that shipped all that capital (and jobs) overseas…………….

Guess what……don’t buy it and it will not come……….

kayaker 71

November 15th, 2011
4:45 pm

Dated a Belgian girl for awhile while stationed in Germany. And sometimes, just before I close my eyes to go to sleep, I can still smell that sweet Eau de Cologne that she used to wear. Damn, that seems like a long time ago.

DebbieDoRight

November 15th, 2011
4:46 pm

jt: Quote from Goldman Sachs about the Federal government………….or vice versus…I forget which was which

That was cold jt. that was cold.

Ross Perot

November 15th, 2011
4:47 pm

Who would think that Ross is a republican? You hear that giant sucking sound? That was your middle class jobs getting sucked to 3rd world countries courtesy of both parties signing on to Nafta!

josef

November 15th, 2011
4:48 pm

kayaker

“Damn, that seems like a long time ago.”

It was! :-)

MEGO

November 15th, 2011
4:48 pm

Josef….IMHO the best damn chocolate in the world!! Was just there this past summer.

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
4:49 pm

Barney Frank affected the UK housing market by joining
with Elton John, another guy with two first names, and croooning
a tune in praise of the Lion King who lived in pride without
predjudice and believed in housing and healthcare for all….

josef

November 15th, 2011
4:50 pm

ROSS PEROT

Yep. You tried to warn us about NAFTA, but did we listen? Noooo…but then there were those aliens crashing the wedding…

carlosgvv

November 15th, 2011
4:51 pm

AmVet – 4:37

These “would be facists” are all Tea Party nuts. A coincedence, no doubt.

kayaker 71

November 15th, 2011
4:51 pm

joseph,

About 48 yrs. ago. Yeah, it was.

josef

November 15th, 2011
4:52 pm

MEGO

Was coming back once and was about to be zapped a stiff fee at customs for my chocolate…ha! What I couldn’t eat myself, shared with my fellow travelers… that stuff is the best in the world…

DebbieDoRight

November 15th, 2011
4:53 pm

To SoCoBro (if he shows his Bama face again).

Hey SoCoBro – I guess LSU beat the #2 outta Bama!!!

PS: Did you catch the history of the Bama / Auburn feud on ESPN? It’s called Roll Tide / War Eagle. It’s very good, if it comes back on, try and catch it (if you missed the first run).

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
4:53 pm

chocolate, babes, beer, I need a ticket to Belgium…..

Ross Perot

November 15th, 2011
4:53 pm

Mighta been the trappist monk beer I was slingin’.

Joe Hussein Mama

November 15th, 2011
4:54 pm

Jay, how long have you been reading Barry Ritholtz’ Big Picture? :D

kayaker 71

November 15th, 2011
4:55 pm

Debbie,

Auburn just wants to get out of the Iron Bowl with some respect and their skin intact. They are playing at Auburn this year which probably won’t matter. After that debacle against GA, we’ll take about anything.

Jay

November 15th, 2011
4:56 pm

Housing prices are driven up by demand. Banks don’t create demand for housing, people do…

That’s incorrect. Banks DO create demand for housing by offering mortgages at very low interest rates, by offering them to anybody who could breathe, regardless of ability to pay, by eliminating down payment requirements, by offering interest-only and other ARMs, and by marketing the hell out of mortgages by paying agents to even go into churches and peddle them to little old ladies, all of which happened. They dumped so much free and easy money into the housing market that it inflated, just like a bubble, and then burst, just like a bubble.

Same story in all those countries. Same result too.

md

November 15th, 2011
4:56 pm

DDR……after that whoppin AU took sat, might want to lay low………

Mr. Snarky

November 15th, 2011
4:58 pm

I blame Excel for it.

Mr. Snarky

November 15th, 2011
4:58 pm

And those annoying data filled charts.

Jay

November 15th, 2011
4:58 pm

Joe, several years now. He sent me an email once, having stumbled on this blog, marveling at the commenters here. That made me chuckle.

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
4:58 pm

Is a recession a downward bubble?

Redneck Convert (R--and proud of it)

November 15th, 2011
4:58 pm

Well, a cousin of my grandfather’s 2nd wife swears it was Barney Frank that forced all the banks to loan money to people to buy houses they couldn’t afford. He knows a guy that knows a big fat Welfare Queen that never had no money and got a loan to buy a half-million buck house with nothing down. She had six kids and they was all wearing designer jeans and Gucci loafers whenever she went to spend her food stamps in her new Cadillac Escalade. Of course the house went into foreclosure after the 3rd missed mortgage payment.

Anyhow, I beleive the guy because he’s got more money than me and is a Republican besides. I say we string this Barney Frank up and put in a good Straight Republican to take his place. What do you expect will happen when you put in a gay Congressman to make the laws that control the banks?

What we need is another Bailout to make up for the losses of all these banks and then let them loan money just to the people that don’t need it to buy a house. Let’s face it, if you need a loan to buy a house you can’t afford it.

Let the 46% or so live under bridges, the way God intended it. Let’s get back to the America that lives by the Golden Rule. If you got the money, you make the rule. That’s the only way we’re going to have a country worth having.

Have a good night everybody.

md

November 15th, 2011
5:00 pm

“Banks don’t create demand for housing, people do…”

No Jay…..he is correct……..banks don’t create it……they can help create it, but it is people/consumers that create it………..without that other signature, the banks have nothing.

Prostitutes show an awful lot of the goods, but without that willing buyer………

MEGO

November 15th, 2011
5:00 pm

Josef, we bought boxes of the stuff to bring back as gifts……problem was it was only 3 days into a 15 day trip. I am sure you can imagine what happened. LOL!!

kayaker 71

November 15th, 2011
5:00 pm

Bookman,

Do the borrowers have any skin in this game? Although the lenders may of encouraged borrowers to sign on the line, does the smell of cheap money and their apparent greed make them complicit? Should they have said, “I just can’t afford this. It doesn’t sound like sound finance to me”. I doubt that you would have taken out a loan that you knew you could not repay. The evil lenders are not the only bad guys in this scenario…. not by a long shot.

Jay

November 15th, 2011
5:06 pm

kayaker, I never suggested that the borrowers didn’t have some skin in the game. I merely pointed out that the bankers who supposedly had the financial expertise to know better in fact played a major role in creating this crisis.

As for the homeowners, millions lost their homes, others lost their credit ratings, still others owe a lot more on their mortgage than their house is worth.

The banks that sweet-talked them into that deal? Still rolling in profits and bonuses, for the most part.

Jay

November 15th, 2011
5:07 pm

md, so in your little morality tale, the bankers are the prostitutes?

well, if you say so….

Mr. Snarky

November 15th, 2011
5:07 pm

Actually, Demand is something independent of supply. However, if you lower the price of something (by say having low short term interest on loans) and increasing supply, quantity bought will increase depending upon the elasticity of the demand for that product. In this case it would appear that demand elasticity was high. Therefore, banks by lowering interest rates and lowering lending standards, increased quantity demanded…not demand itself.
(I was an econ major)

Ross Perot

November 15th, 2011
5:08 pm

I could go for a Belgian lady dipped in chocolate with a Samiclaus beer. I wonder if Herman would want the same?

josef

November 15th, 2011
5:08 pm

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.”
–Polonius to Laertes, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene III

Scooter

November 15th, 2011
5:09 pm

I don’t blame ALL of the cause on governmental policies, but Jay seems to insist all blame be placed on the private sector. Jay needs to learn how liquidity is provided to the mortgage market through the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) and how those GSE’s are required to promote the mission Statement of H.U.D.. It was that promotion that pumped toxic assets into the financial markets, where unscrupulous AIG offered to insure against losses with un-capitalized Credit Default Swaps… and died as a result.

Simple fact is the GSE’s lowered their underwriting standards in order to buy more loans from originating banks, so more people could have access to home ownership. The banks made loans knowing their default risk would be minimal after selling the mortgage to the GSE’s. From there the GSEs bundled loans into mortgage backed securities and sold them into the financial markets, aka Wall Street. How Wall Street played with the toxins that came from the GSE’s seems to be all Jay wants to focus on, like a good defender of the government.

Mr. Snarky

November 15th, 2011
5:09 pm

Sucks to be underwater in Belgium. The Irish are used to it though.

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
5:10 pm

Mr Snarky, did you know Scout? he was a recon private?

Ross Perot

November 15th, 2011
5:11 pm

A downward bubble is NEVER a good thing!

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
5:11 pm

sorry, Mr. Snarky, I read recon major….

TaxPayer

November 15th, 2011
5:12 pm

He sent me an email once, having stumbled on this blog, marveling at the commenters here.

Uh Oh! That can’t be good when the bloggers start to get a reputation. Especially one of being “marveled” at.

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
5:12 pm

downward bubbles are economic flatulence

Jay

November 15th, 2011
5:15 pm

Scooter, if you want to discuss the roles of GSEs, we can do that. For example, here’s what a recent study of housing data found:

“• Credit Scores: Eighty-four percent of single-family mortgages acquired by the GSEs during 2001 to 2008 were made to borrowers with FICO credit scores above 660, while 5 percent were made to borrowers with FICO scores below 620. In contrast, 47 percent of mortgages financed with private-label MBS originated during this period were made to borrowers with FICO scores above 660, while 32 percent were made to borrowers with FICO scores lower than 620.

• Loan-to-Value (LTV) Ratios: Over 82 percent of GSE-acquired loans had LTV ratios at origination of 80 percent or less, while two-thirds of mortgages financed with private-label MBS had LTV ratios at or below 80 percent, with that share increasing from 54 percent of 2001 originations to 81 percent of 2008 originations.

• Loan Payment Type: Eighty-eight percent of GSE-acquired mortgages were fixed-rate loans originated between 2001 and 2008 and ranged from 79 percent for 2004 originations to 96 percent for 2001 originations. Mortgages financed with private-label MBS were predominantly adjustable-rate loans; comprising more than 70 percent of mortgages financed with private-label MBS originated between 2001 and 2008.

• Performance: Roughly 5 percent of GSE-acquired, fixed-rate mortgages and 10 percent of GSE-acquired ARMs were over 90 days delinquent at some point before the end of 2009. Roughly 20 percent of fixed-rate mortgages and 30 percent of ARMs financed with private-label MBS were over 90-days delinquent at some point before year-end 2009.”

In other words, by every measure, GSE-backed loans were considerably more responsible and produced considerably fewer delinquencies. If the private industry loans had followed the examples of the GSEs, this crisis would never have happened.

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
5:15 pm

Taxpayer 5:12 I grew up with marvel comics, affected my entire life, evidently
some others such as Aqua Girl….

getalife

November 15th, 2011
5:18 pm

Bless their con hearts.

They have no credibility so they sling poo .

Joe Hussein Mama

November 15th, 2011
5:19 pm

Jay — “Joe, several years now. He sent me an email once, having stumbled on this blog, marveling at the commenters here. That made me chuckle.”

Some of his regular commentors are kinda precious themselves. :D

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
5:20 pm

searching GDP on Google brings up some interesting graphs from
the World Bank especially comparing the US to the world ..

Joe Hussein Mama

November 15th, 2011
5:22 pm

Scooter — “The banks made loans knowing their default risk would be minimal after selling the mortgage to the GSE’s.”

And here’s the indictment, but Scooter blows right past it to blame FNMA and FHLMC for *buying* the mortgages that he admits the lending institutions shouldn’t have been selling in the first place.

Mr. Snarky

November 15th, 2011
5:22 pm

Actually, it looks like the UK has it worse than Belgium. Did Fannie Mae open branches over there?

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
5:24 pm

It is imperative that the Bush tax cuts be made permanent
in order to preserve the wealthy. Without the wealthy the
poor would have no standard by which to judge their failure..

Joe Hussein Mama

November 15th, 2011
5:27 pm

Mr. Snarky — “Did Fannie Mae open branches over there?”

Yes, but it’s a “gentlemen’s club” called May’s Fannie. And they only sell fish n’ chips, warm lager and lap dances.

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
5:30 pm

getalife 5:18 sling poo lives in Singapore, the freest economy
in the world.

barking frog

November 15th, 2011
5:32 pm

JHM 5:27 looks like an alternate destination to Belgium…