Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were put under U.S. government conservatorship on September 7, 2008. Countrywide, the nation's largest mortgage lender failed, along with large Wall Street mortgage investment banks, and the nation's 4th largest bank, Washington Mutual. The American mortgage/financial collapse was underway.

President Bush proposed a $700 billion taxpayer bailout of the mortgage and banking industry meltdown. The Democrat-controlled Congress wanted to do it, but they would not without Republican support because they don't want to be blamed if it doesn't work. The bailout was, of course, approved. Not to do it would have undoubtedly caused further financial chaos here and throughout the world financial markets, to which we are inextricably tied.

Who (alive today) is primarily to blame for the easy mortgage madness, the inflation of housing costs and the mortgage/financial meltdown? Former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Representative Barney Frank.

Barney Frank should be held to account and removed from the House of Representatives without retirement pay. Likewise, Former presidents Carter and Clinton should have all taxpayer compensation cut-off.

The burning question is, why are elected officials and the news media not explaining what really happened, what caused the housing and mortgage madness, and laying blame where it belongs? To understand why, read on:

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) was created as part of the National Housing Act of 1934. The goals of the organization are: to improve housing standards and conditions; to provide an adequate home financing system through insurance of mortgage loans; and to stabilize the mortgage market. In 1965, the FHA became part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). FHA insurance premiums are paid by homeowners, which are included in monthly payments, and it the only government agency that is completely self-funded and comes at no cost to taxpayers.

The total number of FHA loans fell from 19 percent in 1996 to 6 percent in 2005, with almost all of the decline occurring since 2001.

If government had done nothing further, and not created the housing/mortgage monsters that followed the creation of the FHA, this mortgage/financial meltdown would not have happened. Government-driven mortgage financing, turned creative financing and the easy-money mortgage madness for unqualified homebuyers simply created mortgage and finance monsters, which threaten the entire economy.

The Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) was created in 1938 as a government agency by FDR' New Deal to provide liquidity to the mortgage market. For the next thirty years, Fannie Mae held a virtual monopoly on the secondary mortgage market.

In 1968, LBJ removed Fannie Mae from the annual balance sheet of the federal budget and converted it into a private corporation. The guarantor of government-issued mortgages was transferred to the new Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae)

The Emergency Home Finance Act of 1970 created Freddie Mac. The goal was to create a seconday market for conventional mortgages, as indicated in the Fannie Mae charter.

In 1977, Former President Jimmy Carter created the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) which was passed by the 95th Congress to increase affordable housing, despite opposition from the banking community.

In 1992, the regulator of Fannie Mae was critically weakened by the actions of Congressional Representative Barney Frank. The agency was required to get its budget approved by Congress, while agencies that regulated banks set their own budgets. That gave congressional allies an easy way to exert pressure. In the late 1990's, under the direction of the Clinton Administration's relaxing of lending standard, the then Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines relaxed lending standards to allow subprime borrowers to obtain loans.

In 1995, President Clinton's administration revised Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) regulations that allowed mortgage lenders like Countrywide, that do not mitigate loan risk with savings deposits as do traditional banks using the new subprime authorization, which is known the secondary mortgage market. The revisions allowed securitization of CRA loans containing subprime mortgages, which were first started by Bear Sterns in 1997. The number of CRA mortgage loans increased 39 percent between 1993 and 1998, while other loans increased only 17 percent. Other rule changes gave Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac extraordinary leverage, allowing them to hold just 2.5% of capital to back their investments, as opposed to 10% for banks. By 2007, Fannie Maw and Freddie Mac owned or guaranteed nearly half of the $12 trillion U.S. mortgage market.

In 2003, the Bush administration proposed changes to move governmental supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under a new agency created within the Department of the Treasury. Spearheaded by Representative Barney Frank, the proposal was defeated. Frank said, "Theses two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Max -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis, the more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we see in terms of affordable housing."

The CRA, the Clinton Administration and Representative Barney Frank encouraged risky lending, and put pressure on banks and mortgage lenders such as Countrywide, which caused the subprime mortgage crisis.