W. Todd Akin: “The problem was created by this silly legislation, largely, that came from this floor over a period of different…”

“The problem was created by this silly legislation, largely, that came from this floor over a period of different generations of politicians who encouraged people to be irresponsible and to take out debt that they couldn't pay. Now, I don't know if that might have been sold as compassion, but I don't think it's compassionate to sell a man a loan that he can't pay back, that puts his whole family under stress as they labor under the economics of not being able to pay a loan. So what happens is you get more and more people taking these loans, and the people who are writing the loans don't care because it used to be that a bank had to live with the bad loans they made, but these loans are just passed on to Freddie and Fanny, and you know the government takes care of all of those loans. So we make all of these loans that don't work, and pretty soon these things start sliding down the wall. The tragedy is half of them are still due. So that then throws the whole world economy into a shock. So we're left here today at a crossroads.”