Cal Thomas, tagged as "America's most syndicated op-ed columnist" is confidently forecasting that the United States is inching towards another housing crisis.
According to Housing Wire, Thomas came out with a column published on Fox News and other newspapers all over the country. In his column, the well-known anti-Democrat writer said that Fannie Mae's HomeReady program is a housing disaster waiting to happen.
In the article, Thomas outlined how the Federal National Mortgage Association otherwise known as Fannie Mae plans to offer a new mortgage loan scheme that he said could potentially have the same devastating effect to the housing economy as the time the agency allowed people to borrow more money than they can afford to pay for. He cited that these borrowers either did not have jobs or the income, have low credit scores, and would not pass the requirements for traditional loans.
However, many experts and housing market watchers believe Thomas may have overstepped his bounds as far as knowledge of Fannie Mae and its duties are involved. The agency has never been a mortgage lending entity but instead secures mortgages with secondary bond markets. He also indicated in his post that immigrants post a big problem to the U.S. financial system because of their desire to have their own homes.
In the column posted by Thomas on Fox News, he questions the Obama administration's housing program and said the government is just trying to substitute names to the kind of mortgages that caused the last housing market crash. He said the government is probably thinking it can get away with calling "subprime" mortgages "alternative" which would appear less risky and more acceptable to the public. Thomas said, "It might as well be called DefaultReady, because it is just as risky as the subprime junk Fannie was peddling on the eve of the crisis."
