1991 : (—See 2008 MORTGAGE CRISIS) ACORN showed its colors again in 1991, by taking over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the CRA.[1977 Community Reinvestment Act ]-——— “Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis,” By James Simpson, September 28, 2008 http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html
1990s EARLY : (CHICAGO : ) IT would be tough to find an “on the ground” community organizer more closely tied to the subprime-mortgage fiasco than Madeline Talbott. And no one has been more supportive of Madeline Talbott than Barack Obama.When Obama was just a budding community organizer in Chicago, Talbott was so impressed that she asked him to train her personal staff.
He returned to Chicago in the early ‘90s, just as Talbott was starting her pressure campaign on local banks. Chicago ACORN sought out Obama’s legal services for a “motor voter” case and partnered with him on his 1992 “Project VOTE” registration drive.In those years, he also conducted leadership-training seminars for ACORN’s up-and-coming organizers. That is, Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott’s drive against Chicago’s banks.
More than that, Obama was funding them. As he rose to a leadership role at Chicago’s Woods Fund, he became the most powerful voice on the foundation’s board for supporting ACORN and other community organizers. ——— From:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09292008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/os_dangerous_pals_131216.htm?page=0
APRIL 1992 : (ILLINOIS : ACORN-CHICAGO DIRECTOR MADELINE TALBOTT — See 2008 MORTGAGE CRISIS) IN April 1992, [Madeline] Talbott filed an other precedent-setting complaint using the “community support requirements” of the 1989 savings-and-loan bailout, this time against Avondale Federal Bank for Savings. Within a month, Chicago ACORN had organized its first “bank fair” at Malcolm X College and found 16 Chicago-area financial institutions willing to participate.
Two months later, aided by ACORN organizer Sandra Maxwell, Talbott announced plans to conduct demonstrations in the lobbies of area banks that refused to attend an ACORN-sponsored national bank “summit” in New York. She insisted that banks show a commitment to minority lending by lowering their standards on downpayments and underwriting - for example, by overlooking bad credit histories.
By September 1992, The Chicago Tribune was describing Talbott’s program as “affirma- tive-action lending” and ACORN was issuing fact sheets bragging about relaxations of credit standards that it had won on behalf of minorities.-——— From:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09292008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/os_dangerous_pals_131216.htm?page=0
1990s : (ATTNY BARAK OBAMA, ACORN & THE CRA-— See 2008 MORTGAGE CRISIS ) As a young attorney in the 1990s, Barack Obama represented ACORN in Washington in their successful efforts to expand Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) authority. In addition to making it easier for ACORN groups to force banks into making risky loans, this also paved the way for banks like Superior {See SUPERIOR BANK CHICAGO BOARD CHAIR PENNY PRITZGER, ALSO FUTURE FINANCE CHAIR OF 2008 OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN} to package mortgages as investments, and for the Government Sponsored Enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to underwrite them. These changes created the conditions that ultimately lead to the current financial crisis.
Did they not know this would occur? Were these smart people, led by a Harvard graduate, unaware of the Econ 101 concept of moral hazard that would result from the government making implicit guarantees to underwrite private sector financial risk? They should have known that freeing the high-risk mortgage market of risk, calamity was sure to ensue. I think they did...
...Most significantly, Penny Pritzker, the current Finance Chairperson of Obama’s presidential campaign helped develop the complicated investment bundling of subprime securities at the heart of the meltdown. She did so in her position as shareholder and board chair of Superior Bank. The Bank failed in 2001, one of the largest in recent history, wiping out $50 million in uninsured life savings of approximately 1,400 customers. She was named in a RICO class action law suit but doesn’t seem to have come out of it too badly....-——— “Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis,” By James Simpson, September 28, 2008 http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html
SEPTEMBER 1993 : (REPORT : ACORN-CHICAGO DIRECTOR MADELINE TALBOTT ) Talbott continued her effort to, as she put it, drag banks “kicking and screaming” into high-risk loans. A September 1993 story in The Chicago Sun-Times presents her as the leader of an initiative in which five area financial institutions (including two of her former targets, now plainly cowed - Bell Federal Savings and Avondale Federal Savings) were “participating in a $55 million national pilot program with affordable-housing group ACORN to make mortgages for low- and moderate-income people with troubled credit histories.”
What made this program different from others, the paper added, was the participation of Fannie Mae - which had agreed to buy up the loans. “If this pilot program works,” crowed Talbott, “it will send a message to the lending community that it’s OK to make these kind of loans.”Well, the pilot program “worked,” and Fannie Mae’s message that risky loans to minorities were “OK” was sent. The rest is financial-meltdown history.-——— From:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09292008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/os_dangerous_pals_131216.htm?page=0
1994 : (ACORN ATTNY BARAK OBAMA-——See 2008 MORTGAGE CRISIS) Obama represented ACORN in the Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 1994 suit against redlining [claims that banks discriminated against minorities in mortgage lending.]. -——— “Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis,” By James Simpson, September 28, 2008 http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html
O'Keefe's video might just be the seismic political event that could turn into a devastating tsunami for the Democrats next fall. At the very lest, they sure have made some AWESOME waves!