So how could they possibly be a problem?

Ann Coulter nails the sub-prime cause of the current recession (if you think it is over, think again):

Forget “stimulus” bills and “shovel-ready” bailouts (for public school teachers, who need shovels for what they’re teaching), the current financial crisis, which is the second Great Depression, was created slowly and methodically by Democrat hacks running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the past 18 years…

Goo-goo liberals with federal titles pressured banks into making absurd loans to high-risk borrowers — demanding, for example, that the banks accept unemployment benefits as collateral. Then Fannie repackaged the bad loans as “prime mortgages” and sold them to banks, thus poisoning the entire financial market with hidden bad loans.

In 2003, Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee wrote a bill to tighten the lending regulation of Fannie and Freddie. Every single Democrat on the committee voted against it.

In the House, Barney Frank angrily proclaimed that Fannie Mae was “just fine.”

Fannie was pressuring banks to write mortgages with no money down and no proof of income. What could go wrong?

In 2004, Bush’s White House Chief Economist Gregory Mankiw warned that Fannie was creating “systemic risk for our financial system.” In response, Barney Frank went to a champagne brunch with his partner “just because.”

Democrats saw nothing of concern in the Fannie debacle. Bad mortgages don’t contain sodium, do they? They don’t engage in “hate speech.” And they don’t emit carbon dioxide. There was nothing to catch a Democrat’s eye.

Until it all went wrong, and then it was George Bush’s fault.

I was in Glenelg on New Year’s Day. There was a juggler. He was from the US. He was quite good. But after ten minutes I had enough of the ‘George Bush is stupid’ jokes.

For heaven’s sake, the guy’s been gone for three years. Isn’t it time to start blaming someone else?