Would Al Gore have stopped the Housing Bubble?

I know the issue has come up repeatedly if Al Gore would have stopped 911 or not, but what about the great domestic/economic policy crisis of the Bush years that led to the so called Great Recession and almost led to another Great Depression. Keep in mind Bush tried to tighten up regulations on the mortgage industry, but was blocked by not only dems, but his own party in Congress.

From the NY Times September 11th 2003.

New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt -- is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.

''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/b...mac-and-fannie-mae.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
 
Completely stopped? No. But made it smaller? Yes. Unlike Bush, he wouldn't go to the right of Alan Greenspan of all people and ignore advice from the Fed.
 
Seeing as Clinton had helped push for alot of the mortgage deregulation and universal homeownership things which led to the bubble I could actually see it being far worse if Gore continued Clinton's policies, particularly in trying to get more lower income people to get mortgages.
 
It would be worse, Gore would have pushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to lend more widely in order to raise home ownership among low income groups who frankly can't afford homes with even more disastrous results. Also the idea that Gore would be putting pressure on Greenspan to raise interest rates and end the housing bubble is just ludicrous.
 

NothingNow

Banned
It would be worse, Gore would have pushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to lend more widely in order to raise home ownership among low income groups who frankly can't afford homes with even more disastrous results. Also the idea that Gore would be putting pressure on Greenspan to raise interest rates and end the housing bubble is just ludicrous.

Except the president can't really force Fannie and Freddie to do anything, so it comes down more to regulation, and with congress looking to fuck over the president at every opportunity, they would've been too busy listening to Ken Starr's latest ravings to further deregulate (as the president may or may not have preferred.)
 
The President could not have signed the bill for the continuation of the Carter era Community redevelopment bill. i think that was what is was called. Its main purpose to increase housing for the lower classes. This started the sub-prime mortgage debacle. Bush reauthorized it. So if Gore had not signed it( very unlikely) it could have stopped it for getting so out of hand.
 
No, as other users have pointed out, if anything he'd have made them worse. A lot of the programs that sparked it were Clinton administration programs, and what reforms that might have prevented it in OTL were stopped by Democrats (namely Barney Frank). Odds are good, Gore would continue the programs and expand them, sparking an earlier worse resession.
 
No, as other users have pointed out, if anything he'd have made them worse. A lot of the programs that sparked it were Clinton administration programs, and what reforms that might have prevented it in OTL were stopped by Democrats (namely Barney Frank). Odds are good, Gore would continue the programs and expand them, sparking an earlier worse resession.

If he didn't react quickly enough with the bailouts it could have been a Global Depression.

The U.S. didn't need someone with a deliberative cautious mindset in fact that could have been fatal to the world economy. It needed someone who was willing to do massive things no matter how unpopular if he thinks they need to be done quickly. Doing everything right was far less important then doing everything quickly when the crisis hit. As once panic sets in and it did it has to be stopped ASAP or it will wipe out an economy and our economy is connected to all the others so we would have had another Global Depression.
 
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