Folks, I got this from  Ed weaver's column in the Troy Record, 10/5/10

  "What realy frosts me is how the media--from Dicker to Lovett, to the networks, to the local publications and TV/Radio stations--has for two years ignored Cuomo's role in the Housing collapse, which is the biggest reason for the economic malasie the Nation has faced.
  As Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Clinton, Cuomo was well aware that banks and mortgage lenders were forced, under threats from the Attorney General's office, to give mortgages to borrowers who were categorically unqualified.
    Attorney General Janet Remo handled this one herself, this one wasn't farmed out to Jamie Gorelick or Eric Holder as so many other undertakings of her office.
   According to Columbia University professor Wayne Barrett - among many others - Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's, both government sponsored enterprises, purchases of sub-prime loans skyrocketed.
   The problem, Barrett says, wasn't merely that HUD under Cuomo was raising the volume of risky loans that taxpayers were guarenteeing; HUD was also encouraging a dangerous decline in underwriting standards.
   Says former Fannie chief credit officer Edward Pinto, :"HUD commissioned much research aimed at forcing the adoption of more flexible lending standards."
   In 2008, Barrett wrote in detail about the changes Cuomo also wrought at the Federal Housing Administration encouraging bigger loans with smaller down payments.
   Barrett has written that Cuomo "made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country's current crisis."