asuhow,
I think there is a bit of a myth going around, especially in the media, that this is a "housing crisis" or a "mortgage crisis." That plays a small part, but not the major part, in my opinion. The fact is that those loans could and would never have been made if Freddie and Fannie weren't packaging and re-selling those mortgages in CDO's (collaterized debt obligations) and leveraging those derivatives to 70 times or more their (alleged) intrinsic worth.
Just listen to some of the hedge fund managers who shorted Freddie and Fannie talk about the balance sheets of those two companies and others. I don't understand why the SEC couldn't or wouldn't read the balance sheets as well. Or maybe they did read them and didn't choose to do anything about them.
Bladerunner