Spin Cycle

Andrew Cuomo’s tenure as federal Housing and Urban Development secretary and how it contributed to today’s mortgage crisis receives an in-depth look here from the Village Voice’s Wayne Barrett.

The report shows that Cuomo’s drive to increase home ownership among the poor, while well intentioned, led the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) to become massively involved in risk loans. The Federal Reserve recently engineered a bailout for both – but Barrett argues had Cuomo done a better job at HUD the mess wouldn’t have occurred in the first place.

Cuomo declined to be interviewed by the weekly paper. But his aide Howard Glaser told the Voice that "mortgage bankers thought Cuomo was the toughest secretary they had ever known." Glaser also denied that Cuomo, now state Attorney General, wasn’t a vigilant regulator of Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac.

James T. Madore