>At the behest of HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo, Fannie and Freddie promised to buy $2 trillion of "affordable" mortgages. That is a complete explanation in itsel

>At the behest of HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo, Fannie and Freddie promised to buy $2 trillion of "affordable" mortgages. That is a complete explanation in itself and it was not caused by the CRA legislation (it merely shared the same motivation). When you let mortgage brokers offload all the risk from writing stupid loans, you have altered all their incentives.