[Steely Tom]

I remember the beginnings of this whole fiasco, back in the '90's. There were a bunch of stories in the press about how lending institutions were rejecting loan applications from A-A borrowers at a much higher rate than they were for whites. I think that one of the Federal Reserve banks may have done a study leading to this conclusion.

The MSM and NPR immediately jumped on the bandwagon. There were a few voices pointing out that a fairer metric would have been to compare the foreclosure rates for blacks and whites; that number was nearly identical. They were shouted down.

The Democrats in congress threatened to conduct hearings into the "crisis." Terms like "redlining" and "ethnic clensing" were tossed about. Bankers started to wet their pants.

Then... silence. Absolute silence on the subject.

Years go by. Then...

Subprime meltdown. Senators and congressmen getting sweetheart mortgage deals. You know the rest.

Come to think of it, the original brouhaha might have blown up when the congress was taking heat over the house bank; you remember, congresspersons going to the house post office to redeem $15K in postage stamps, week after week.

[xcamel]

Thank Andrew Cuomo for starting all that “redlining” BS