Bush signed a $170 billion economic stimulus package which was intended to improve the economic situation by sending tax rebate checks to many Americans and providing tax breaks for struggling businesses.
The Bush administration pushed for significantly increased regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2003,[107] and after two years, the regulations passed the House but died in the Senate. Many Republican senators, as well as influential members of the Bush Administration, feared that the agency created by these regulations would merely be mimicking the private sector’s risky practices.
[108][109] In September 2008,
the crisis became much more serious beginning
with the government takeover of
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac followed by the collapse of
Lehman Brothers[110] and a federal bailout of
American International Group for $85 billion.
[111]
Many economists and world governments determined that the situation became the worst financial crisis since the
Great Depression.
[112][113] Additional regulation over the housing market would have been beneficial, according to former
Federal Reserve Chairman
Alan Greenspan.
[114] President Bush, meanwhile, proposed a
financial rescue plan to buy back a large portion of the U.S. mortgage market.
[115] Vince Reinhardt, a former Federal Reserve economist now at the American Enterprise Institute, said "it would have helped for the Bush administration to empower the folks at Treasury and the Federal Reserve and the comptroller of the currency and the
FDIC to look at these issues more closely", and additionally, that it would have helped "for Congress to have held hearings".
[109]