nyone wanting to learn why America’s lending structure has collapsed need only read the New York Times article, “Fannie Mae Eases Credit to Aid Mortgage Lending,” written by Steven A. Holmes on Sept. 30, 1999.

The article reported that, under pressure from the Clinton Administration, the Fannie Mae Corporation had loosened credit requirements on loans it purchased from banks and other lenders so that it could “increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers.” It described the purpose of this program as encouraging banks “to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans.”

Remarkably prescient was the reporter’s observation that while Fannie Mae’s purchase of these risky loans might not be problematic in a healthy economy, it “may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980s.”

In retrospect, Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute is the hero of the article, having prophesied accurately that, “If they [the high-risk loans] fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out…”

Reviewing this nine-year-old article is unsettling. It is a “smoking gun” that reveals how liberals put America on a path to the current crisis despite the warnings of free market critics.

Even with this paper trail, liberals are refusing to take responsibility for the ongoing implosion of their failed policies. Worse, they are trying to shift blame to the free enterprise system.

We do not think they will get away with the ruse. To borrow the old horror movie line, “We know who you are and saw what you did.”