Are you upset? Looking for someone to blame for the mortgage crisis? Blame Congress, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday morning.
Bloomberg at an Association for a Better New York breakfast — a New York business organization — was asked his opinion of the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests, Capital New York’s Azi Paybarah reports. “I hear your complaints,” Bloomberg replied, before shifting the conversation to the housing crisis.
“It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis,” he said. “It was plain and simple, Congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp.”
Bloomberg said it’s easy to blame the banks because they’re one target, and that Congress surely won’t blame itself. “But they’re the ones who pushed Fannie and Freddie to make a bunch of loans that were imprudent, if you will,” he said.
The three-term New York mayor made his fortune from the financial news and information service that bears his name, so it’s perhaps not surprising he wouldn’t go directly after Wall Street. Over the past month, Bloomberg has had a range of reactions to the anti-Wall Street protests, sometimes being generally supportive, and other times condemning the movement. Bloomberg’s office did not immediately respond to TPM’s request for further comment.
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