Infiltrated: How to Stop the Insiders and Activists Who Are Exploiting the Financial Crisis to Control Our Lives and Our Fortunes

CHAPTER 9

AMERICAN DISSENT

From Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, presidents have upheld homeownership as the defining feature of the American Dream. “A nation of homeowners is unconquerable,” declared Roosevelt as the United States entered World War II; almost sixty years later, Bush was affirming his belief that homeownership has the power to transform people.¹

For half of a century the federal government piled one policy on top of another to increase homeownership. The 1930s saw the establishment of Federal Home Loan Banks (to expand access to credit), the creation of the Federal Housing Administration (to insure mortgages that might otherwise be too risky for banks to sell), and the formation ...