setting the record straight

McCain: But you know, one of the real catalysts, really the match that lit this fire was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. [T]hey're the ones that, with the encouragement of Sen. Obama and his cronies and his friends in Washington, that went out and made all these risky loans, gave them to people that could never afford to pay back. Obama blamed deregulation of the banking industry: Obama: Now, I've got to correct a little bit of Sen. McCain's history, not surprisingly. Let's, first of all, understand that the biggest problem in this whole process was the deregulation of the financial system.
We've been here before. McCain has in fact been in favor of financial deregulation, but President Bill Clinton signed, and a lot of other Democrats supported, much of that same deregulation. And while Democrats really did fight McCain-cosponsored regulations of the FMs, McCain himself signed on to the bill just two months before the housing bubble popped.In fact, there's plenty of blame to go around. Experts have blamed everyone from home buyers to mortgage lenders to Alan Greenspan to both the Bush and Clinton administrations. Furthermore, McCain misspoke when he said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac "made all these risky loans, gave them to people that could never afford to pay back." Actually those organizations did not make "home loans directly with consumers." Rather, they "work[ed] with mortgage bankers, brokers, and other primary mortgage market partners" and supplied them with the funds to lend to home buyers at affordable rates, as described on their Web sites. Sounds like there is PLENTY of blame to go around.