Barney Frank
wants to keep that bubble rolling (via WSJ):
Back when the housing mania was taking off, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank famously said he wanted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to "roll the dice" in the name of affordable housing. That didn't turn out so well, but Mr. Frank has since only accumulated more power. And now he is returning to the scene of the calamity -- with your money. He and New York Representative Anthony Weiner have sent a letter to the heads of Fannie and Freddie exhorting them to lower lending standards for condo buyers. You read that right. After two years of telling us how lax lending standards drove up the market and led to loans that should never have been made, Mr. Frank wants Fannie and Freddie to take more risk in condo developments with high percentages of unsold units, high delinquency rates or high concentrations of ownership within the development.
This, along with the Obama first-time home buyer subsidy, is just another clue that the government wants to solve the housing crash by reinflating the bubble. What they're essentially doing is fluffing up the price of previously existing homes to protect the upper-middle classers (who don't want their property value to go down) at the expense of poorer folk who might be able to afford to buy property if the government would let the market clear.