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Fannie, Freddie And Now, Hannie
Democrats and their advocacy groups also prodded Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy the high-risk NINJA (no income, no job, no assets) loans they'd pressured banks to make to Hispanic immigrants. Now immigrants are defaulting on subprime mortgages in droves, adding to the toxic debt that is poisoning the financial industry.

Yes, Bush was "eager," as the Washington Post described it, to put more Hispanic families into their own homes, even setting a goal of higher minority homeownership soon after taking office.

But Bush didn't pressure lenders to adopt sloppy underwriting standards. Nor did he encourage Fannie and Freddie to underwrite subprime loans to meet quotas for minority lending.

That was done under the previous administration. The groundwork for disaster was laid by Clinton and his social engineers — in this case, former HUD chief Henry Cisneros, now a major lobbyist for Latino homeownership....