The 2008 housing crash destroyed more American wealth than any event since the Great Depression and took a decade to recover from.
Biden spent four years quietly rebuilding the exact conditions that caused it.
One credit scoring scheme buried inside Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is still running – and experts say it's the match.
The VantageScore 4.0 Mortgage Risk Nobody Is Talking About
VantageScore 4.0 is not your grandfather's credit system.
Traditional FICO scoring demands a track record of creditworthy behavior – loans repaid, credit cards managed responsibly.
VantageScore 4.0 opens the door much wider.
It lets lenders count rent payments, utility bills, and phone payments as credit history.
It ignores risk factors like medical debt and paid collections.
VantageScore's own website markets the model to serve people with no traditional credit histories – including recent immigrants.
Biden's FHFA Director Sandra Thompson signed off on it in October 2022 as part of what her agency called a push for a "more inclusive approach to evaluating borrowers."
Lower the bar, extend the risk, stick taxpayers with the bill when it collapses.
The model went live inside Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in July 2025 – meaning lenders are using it right now to determine who gets a federally backed mortgage.
Mortgage Delinquencies Are Already Rising and the Bailout Risk Is Real
Thirty-five organizations sent a letter to the FHFA in January urging extreme caution.
Their concern was direct: changes to credit scoring requirements increase the likelihood of another taxpayer-funded housing bailout.
The numbers are already moving.
VantageScore's own January 2026 data shows early-stage mortgage delinquencies surged 30.9% year over year.
Before 2008, the same conditions were in motion – Fannie and Freddie expanding access to borrowers who couldn't qualify under traditional standards, lax underwriting rubber-stamped in the name of inclusion, with taxpayers absorbing the risk.
By June 2008, more than half of all mortgages in the U.S. financial system were subprime or otherwise low quality.
The GSEs were directly backing 76 percent of them.
What followed was the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression – millions of foreclosures and a recession that wiped out the savings of an entire generation.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, drew the direct line for the Daily Caller.
"The point of risk analysis is to model whether a person is actually likely to pay their loan back," Krikorian said. "If they're wrong and taxpayers pay the price, that's unacceptable. This potentially sets up a replay of the housing crisis from almost 20 years ago."
Fannie and Freddie's Own Leaders Didn't Want This
When the Daily Caller asked the FHFA whether they were reconsidering the model, a spokesperson responded that the reporter was probably "paid by Special Interests."
A January 2026 document release – obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request – showed that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's own leadership had serious reservations about VantageScore when Biden's FHFA pushed them to adopt it.
Nearly 200 of 318 pages were withheld entirely.
What got through showed the GSEs had concerns about accuracy – pulling credit data from fewer bureaus reduced reliability.
Sandra Thompson's FHFA dismissed those concerns and directed Fannie and Freddie to approve VantageScore anyway.
Ed DeMarco, former FHFA acting director, put it plainly: "There is currently no public evidence that these benefits will materialize."
A former regulator saying nobody has proven this model is safe – and Biden pushed it through anyway.
Trump Closed the FHA Door on Illegal Immigrant Mortgages and Left Another One Open
Trump's HUD Secretary Scott Turner moved fast.
On March 26, 2025 HUD eliminated the non-permanent resident category from FHA-insured mortgages entirely.
"Today, HUD terminated Biden's taxpayer-backed FHA mortgages for illegal aliens," Turner announced. "American taxpayers will no longer subsidize open borders by offering home loans to those who enter our nation illegally."
HUD also partnered with DHS to cross-reference housing applications against federal immigration databases.
But VantageScore 4.0 is still running inside Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac through conventional lending channels – a separate pipeline with different eligibility rules.
Krikorian explained what that gap means: "The idea of making it easier for illegal immigrants to get credit scores at all, but mortgages as well, is directly contrary to the broader goal of immigration policy."
"Anything that goes in the other direction is, by definition, helping illegal immigrants stay here."
Bill Pulte is a Trump appointee.
He took over the FHFA in March 2025 and positioned himself as a reformer.
Then in July 2025 he personally announced that VantageScore 4.0 – Biden's model, built for borrowers with no traditional credit history – would go live inside Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac immediately.
Trump slammed the front door on illegal alien mortgages through HUD.
Pulte left the back door open at the FHFA.
The same administration cannot spend a year calling Biden's border policies a national emergency and then shrug while the financial time bomb Biden planted sits armed inside the two institutions that backstop the entire American mortgage market.
Sources:
- Ashley Brasfield, "Biden-Era Policy Could Set The Stage For Another 2008-Style Housing Disaster," The Daily Caller, March 26, 2026.
- "HUD Cracks Down on Government-Backed Mortgages for Illegal Immigrants," HUD.gov / U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, March 26, 2025.
- "Exclusive: HUD Cracks Down on Government-Backed Mortgages for Illegal Immigrants," National Review, March 26, 2025.
- "Fannie, Freddie Leaders Resisted VantageScore Approval in 2022," Scotsman Guide, February 4, 2026.
- "The Subprime Mortgage Market Collapse: A Primer on the Causes and Possible Solutions," The Heritage Foundation.
- "How the Federal Government Created the Subprime Mortgage Crisis," Foundation for Economic Education.
- "HUD Ends FHA Mortgages for Illegal Immigrants," Fox News, March 26, 2025.
- VantageScore CreditGauge, January 2026, VantageScore.
