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Should Americans Support the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street?
...The subprime crisis was designed in Washington, not New York. The FHA discouraged down payments (those old fashioned “savings”), pushing them from their traditional level of 20% down to 3% - and at the start of 2008 to 0%. Everyone, regardless of whether they can afford it, should own a home! Don’t save; speculate in the hope that prices will rise!

Government sponsored enterprises Fannie and Freddie “securitized” home loans under congressional mandates to direct more funds to lower incomes. In 1996, the Department of Housing and Urban Development directed Fannie and Freddie to target 42% of financing to borrowers with incomes below the median in their areas, going to 50% in 2000 and 52% in 2005. Such funding was directed to financing even mobile homes, a move lauded by Rep. Barney Frank as “one of the most important things to happen to make home ownership affordable to people who might otherwise be shut out of the market.” Also, “special affordable” loans were created, with HUD directing Fannie and Freddie to target 12% of financing to borrowers earning less than 60% of the median income, a percentage that rose to 20% in 2000, then 22% in 2005. That percentage was scheduled to go to 28% in 2008....

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Wall Street Did It?
...But based on the number of toxic loans in the system in 2008, the government was responsible for not just a simple majority, but more than two-thirds. It's quantifiable — 71% to be exact (see chart). And the remaining 29% of private-label junk was mostly attributable to Countrywide Financial, which was under the heel of HUD and its "fair-lending" edicts....