Does Community Reinvestment Act relate to 2008 financial crisis?

Yes, it was the beginning of sorrows. Later, circa 1995, Clinton required financial institutions to start providing data to ensure they were making these kind of loans. Up until this time, these instutuions had been slow to comply. Circa, 2001 the Bush administration alerted that there was a problem with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. You can listen, online, to hearings headed up by none other than Barney Frank (who, indicentally had an affair with the head of Fannie Mae) in which some congress people jumped all over the regulators and equated this to a lynching. Maxine Waters, praised Mr. Raines (the head of Fannie Mae) for the outstanding job he did. He walked away with 90 million and drove the organization into insolvency. Shays, in these hearings, repeatedly called for more regulation. One Democratic congressman from Alabama (I can't remember his name) later said that the Democrats were too slow on this and indicated they were wrong -- obsiously. This is what caused the housing market to tank and take down the economy with it. We simply can't make loans to people who are unable to repay them.