Credit, where credit is due:
~~~~
*snip*
But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street’s most revered institutions.
Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties.
The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but “predatory.”
http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=306370789279709
LATE EDITION (CNN) : Douglas Holtz Eakin, adviser to John McCain; Austan Goolsbee, adviser to Barack Obama
boring and I haven’t learn a thing(then again, I am a Freeper), except Blitzer has a ‘blackberry’, and he wants to equate Al Gore’s direct statement to inventing the internet to a McCain advisor’s about the blackberry
I hate to be the devil’s advocate, but I don’t see where the CRA had much to do with this at all.
There’s a couple of reasons:
First, the CRA did not force anyone to make dangerous loans. In fact, the original act specifies that it should “be consistent with the safe and sound operation of such institutions”.
http://www.fdic.gov/regulations/laws/rules/6500-2515.html
There were never any monetary penalties if an institution did not comply with the CRA, it only affected applications for new facilities and preferable treatment on inter bank loans, even after Clinton’s 1999 revisions.
Also, I can’t find that low income loans are the majority of the failures. Everything I see points points to middle and upper middle class foreclosures being the problem.
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/retro-MORTGAGE0807.html
If I’m wrong, I would appreciate some links to applicable mortgage information, or actual penalties levied on institutions for not fulfilling the requirements of CRA.
Thanks.
p.s. I’m off to a service call, be back in a couple of hours.
Thanks for that link;
LATE EDITION (CNN) : Carvelle is on
“Obama offers a tax cut for people making less then $250,000” [ James, tell me where?
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/ ]
[ or you better get that in writing and read the fine print ]