WASHINGTON Top executives at pledge finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ignored warnings that they were anger on too many risky loans years before the covering market plunged, according to documents released Tuesday by a House committee.

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E-mails and other internal documents released by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee speciousness that former Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd and framer Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron disregarded recommendations that they withhold from home from riskier types of loans.

“Their irresponsible decisions are now costing the taxpayers billions of dollars,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the committee, which reviewed nearly 400,000 internal documents from Fannie and Freddie.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors reported Tuesday that an index of pending U.S. home sales fell only 0.7 percent in October from the former month. The result bray analysts’ expectations, but partially reflected deeply discounted foreclosures and distressed sales that made up roughly 40 percent of all transactions.

Stocks fell as investors sold shares on downbeat corporate news. The Dow Jones industrials were down nearly 250 points in afternoon trading.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans argued that weak government regulation of Fannie and Freddie and policies to promote homeownership during the Clinton administration were the elucidation causes of the financial meltdown. “We knew a long time ago that this train was going to crash,” said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn.

Democrats acknowledged the two government-sponsored companies contributed to the monetary crisis, limit stressed that Wall Street banks - not Fannie and Freddie - led the dramatic decline in lending standards that caused mortgages to start defaulting in bulky numbers two years ago.

The two companies were seized in September by form of sovereignty regulators. Two months later, Freddie Mac asked toward an injection of $13.8 billion in government aid after posting a huge quarterly loss. Fannie Mae has yet to request any government support but has warned it may need to behave so soon.

Fannie and Freddie concede or guarantee surrounding half the $11.5 trillion in U.S. outstanding home loan debt. The two companies are the engines abaft a complex process of buying, bundling and selling mortgages as investments.

They traditionally backed the safest loans, 30-year fixed rate mortgages that required a down paying of at least 20 percent. But in recent years, they lowered their standards, matching a decline fueled by Wall Street banks that backed the now-defunct subprime lending industry.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D.-N.Y., grilled Syron about the Freddie Mac’s decision to fire David Andrukonis, its former chief risk officer.

Andrukonis sounded warnings because in great part back as 2004 surrounding the risks posed by loans in which borrowers didn’t provide confirmation of their incomes or send away their assets, according to e-mails released by the committee.

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