<p>Before Barack Obama was President, he protested against the payday loan industry and asked the State of Illinois to regulate these businesses as a state Senator. He even held several protests against banks that would not give loans out to high risk individuals.</p>
<p>Obama, along with the rest of the Democratic party, have long blamed the Republicans for the mortgage crisis and subsequent financial collapse of 2008, however a new study points the finger directly back at the left.</p>
<p>The Investor&rsquo;s Business Daily reported on a new study done by the National Bureau of Economic Research that found the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) that was heavily supported by the Clintons was a key cause of the financial collapse.</p>
<p>The study summed it up by saying, &ldquo;We find that adherence to that act led to riskier lending by banks.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The report continued, &ldquo;There is a clear pattern of increased defaults for loans made by these banks in quarters around the (CRA) exam. Moreover, the effects are larger for loans made within CRA tracts,&rdquo; another term for low-income areas.</p>
<p>To satisfy the CRA requirements, &ldquo;flexible&rdquo; lending rose by about 5%. These loans were 15% more likely to default than others, according to this study.</p>
<p>The biggest piece of evidence that connects CRA lending and the crisis is found in the time between 2004 and 2006, where banks were selling CRA mortgages for securitization by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Wall Street.</p>
<p>In the early 1990s,a Democratic majority Congress approved legislation that gave HUD the authority to enforce CRA-grade loan quotas at both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. By ensuring that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would buy the loans, banks were encouraged to meet their CRA quotas by issuing more high-risk loans. In order for all of this to occur, what had to happen? Underwriting standards had to be loosened.</p>
<p>Despite all of this evidence showing that the Democrats played a major role in the financial crisis, the media will continue to place blame on the Republican party, completely ignoring the black and white facts in front of them.</p>
<p><strong>According to Wikipedia:</strong></p>
<p><strong>The National Bureau of Economic Research</strong> (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization &#8220;committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community.&#8221; The NBER is well known for providing start and end dates for recessions in the United States.</p>
<p>The NBER is the largest economics research organization in the United States.Many of the American winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences were NBER Research Associates. Many of the Chairmen of the Council of Economic Advisers have also been NBER Research Associates, including the former NBER President and Harvard Professor, Martin Feldstein.</p>