Fannie Mae Failure

During a period of tough competition between mortgage lenders for revenue and market share, and when the supply of creditworthy borrowers was limited, mortgage lenders relaxed underwriting standards and originated riskier mortgages to less creditworthy borrowers.[10] In the view of some analysts, the relatively conservative government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) policed mortgage originators and maintained relatively high underwriting standards prior to 2003. However, as market power shifted from securitizers to originators and as intense competition from private securitizers undermined GSE power, mortgage standards declined and risky loans proliferated.[10] The worst loans were originated in 2004–2007, the years of the most intense competition

In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers... In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980s.[43]

In 2001, the independent research company Graham Fisher & Company stated that HUD’s 1995 "National Homeownership Strategy: Partners in the American Dream", a 100-page affordable housing advocacy document, promoted "the relaxation of credit

mortgage lending during the period. The majority of these were prime loans. Sub-prime loans made by CRA-covered institutions constituted a 3% market share of LMI loans in 1998,[48] but in the run-up to the crisis, fully 25% of all sub-prime lending occurred at CRA-covered institutions and another 25% of sub-prime loans had some connection with CRA.[49] In addition, an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in 2009, however, concluded that the CRA was not responsible for the mortgage loan crisis, pointing out that CRA rules have been in place since 1995 whereas the poor lending emerged only a decade later.[50] Furthermore, most sub-prime loans were not made to the LMI borrowers targeted by the CRA, especially in the years 2005–2006 leading up to the crisis. Nor did it find any evidence that lending under the CRA rules increased delinquency rates or that the CRA indirectly influenced independent mortgage lenders to ramp up sub-prime