Protesters demand end to bloodsucking lenders in Boston

Fishy, while it was arguably a bad idea for HUD to encourage Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase their portfoliios of low-income mortgages, no one in Congress "forced" the investment banks to cheat the system till it broke. And Fannie/Freddie's involvement in the sub-prime market lagged that of the rest of the lending market and clearly wasn't the cause of the crisis, as you so cunningly imply. In fact, Fannie Mae stopped acquiring Alt-A mortgages in the early 1990s.

At this point in time it's pretty clear to anyone who's actually educated themselves about this that the begining of the crisis was the passage back in the early 80s of AMTPA (the law that allowed non-federally chartered housing creditors to write adjustable-rate mortgages). By opening up that market and then failing for a quarter century to pass regulations to prevent its exploitation, Congress left the keys in the car with the doors unlocked. The greedy, unethical investment bankers who boosted that car and ran it off a cliff are primarily responsible for the current mess.

Should Frank get grief for opposing a clamp-down on Fannie/Freddie in the mid 90s? You betcha. But the GOPers behind the repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act have far far more blood on their hands. The only reason we hear Frank's name so much in these discussions is because he's hated by the right and he's horrible at admitting when he's made any kind of mistake and keeping his mouth shut. Plus he's fat and gay. He's the perfect target for reactionary ideologs.