to Manhattan Institute scholar Howard Husock, the CEO of a midsize bank reported that 20% of his institution's CRA-related mortgages were delinquent in their first year and probably 7% would end in foreclosure. In a commentary for CNN, Congressman Ron Paul, who serves on the United States House Committee on Financial Services, charged the CRA with "forcing banks to lend to people who normally would be rejected as bad credit risks." In a The Wall Street Journal opinion piece, economist Russell Roberts wrote that the CRA subsidized low-income housing by pressuring banks to serve poor borrowers and poor regions of the country. Other economists have examined the issue and concluded that the CRA did not contribute to the financial crisis, notably economist Paul Krugman, Tim Westrich of the Center for American Progress, Robert Gordon of the American Prospect, Ellen Seidman of the New America Foundation, Daniel Gross of Slate, Dean Baker of The Center For Economic and Policy Research, and Aaron Pressman from BusinessWeek. Law professor Michael S. Barr, a Treasury Department official under President Clinton, stated that approximately 50% of subprime loans were made by independent mortgage companies that were not regulated by the CRA, and another 25% to 30% came from only partially CRA regulated bank subsidiaries and affiliates. Barr noted that institutions fully regulated by CRA made "perhaps one in four" sub-prime loans, and that "the worst and most widespread abuses occurred in the institutions with the least federal oversight". According to American Enterprise Institute fellow Edward Pinto, Bank of America reported in 2008 that its CRA portfolio, which constituted 7% of its owned residential mortgages, was responsible for 29 percent of its losses. He charged that "approximately 50 percent of CRA loans for single-family residences ... [had] characteristics that indicated high credit risk", yet, per the standards used by the various government agencies to evaluate CRA performance at the time, were not counted as "subprime" because borrower credit worthiness was not considered. Krugman argues that Pinto's category of "other high-risk mortgages" incorrectly includes loans that were not high-risk, that instead were like traditional conforming mortgages. Gene Epstein of Barron's disputed Krugman's claims and those of the article he cited as erroneous and misleading. Another CRA critic, Joseph Fried, concedes that "some of this CRA subprime lending might have taken place, even in the absence of CRA. For that reason, the direct impact of CRA on the