This is a symptom of the hot potato game, it was a furthering of already bad policy. They wanted to say even more that "More <insert group here> own homes than ever before!"Damo I really dont think Im trying to avoid laying blame at the dems feet here. I think the sub prime took off in teh way it did because of the 1999 law which freed up the consolidation of the different aspects of the lending process. They were able to package more of these types of loans in the blocks they were selling without the buyer beeing tipped off to their content which meant they could keep selling more because they could bury it and dump it quickly.
It was bad policy to begin with, then they began to think they could keep getting away with it. They even made budgets without regard to changing markets or economic slowdowns because these people are not economic experts. They were playing musical chairs and they began to believe that the music would never stop.
People made bad policy because they wanted to "help" people get into homes, and because of that good intention we wind up with problems.
As I said, it points to the truism that I listed before.
Unintended consequences always follow bad policy, especially when playing around with the bank industry.