Thanks for the info. I see the word “minority” a lot, but not the word “illegals.” You can be a minority without being illegal. I’ll admit Bush had flaws, especially that he was a big spender. But, to his credit, he did say “qualified” low income earners as far as getting housing assistance. But you can ask what does “qualified” mean? Does it mean that you are on the books (registered) as a low earner or does it mean that you still have potential to pay your debts? I give Bush the benefit of a doubt to think that “qualified” means that you can potentially pay your debts. I might be wrong to think this way but I have seen footage on Youtube where Republicans tried to be responsible, tried to reign in Fannie and Freddy.
Well, you've got to do more than simply scan the posted text or perform a string search for the word, "illegal".
Tell me, what is an "undocumented immigrant"?
What is the difference between a "documented immigrant" and an "undocumented immigrant"?
Why do no Mexican banks accept their own government's Matricula Consular card as ID to open a Mexican bank account?
| 2006 Finalist Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation of Chicago Award Sponsor Innovations in American Government Awards Without access to banking services, even small necessities, like paying rent, incur high costs. For the "unbanked," payments are often made with an expensive cashier's check and paychecks cashed through predatory services that charge high fees. It is difficult and dangerous to save money when it must be kept at home, increasing the incentive to consume and placing the purchase of houses, cars, and even most large appliances out of reach. For 75 percent of Mexican immigrants living in the United States--and nearly one third of immigrants from all Latin American countries--these difficulties are part of daily life. As in other immigrant communities around the country, the large Hispanic community of Chicago, composed of recent documented and undocumented immigrants, faced such financial problems. Most were without banking services, paying high premiums to predatory financial businesses such as check-cashing services. Then, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) stepped in. The FDIC branch in Chicago initially intended to fulfill one part of the 2001 "Partnership for Prosperity" agreement between the U.S. and Mexico. The agreement urged the U.S. to seek alternatives to the high-cost wire transfers to Mexico that many immigrants used to send money to families back home. Joining with the Mexican Consulate of Chicago, the FDIC created the New Alliance Task Force (NATF). It was clear to members of the NATF that wire transfers were only the symptom of a larger problem: lack of access to financial services. Drawing on a coalition of 65 people from banks, mortgage industry representatives, community organizations, federal bank oversight agencies, and other government agencies, the NATF sought a comprehensive solution. Four major working groups targeted specific problems; they addressed access to financial education, bank products and services, mortgage products, and social products. Each group developed specific strategies as well as programs to implement them. In some cases, these solutions required dramatic change. Many immigrants lacked identification, which is usually required to open up even basic checking accounts. The NATF helped to sell the Matricula Consular card, issued by the Mexican consulate, as a valid form of banking identification. Partner banks began to accept income tax records to substantiate loan applications. Other solutions employed common sense. Many in the immigrant population were suspicious of both banks and government presence in their lives. The NATF worked to overcome this by positioning bank representatives in the Mexican Consulate. As new immigrants waited in line for their identification cards, they heard about the benefits of banking. The NATF's comprehensive programs helped nearly 160,000 immigrants to open bank accounts. Many thousands more received financial counseling, mortgage assistance, and other forms of support. The success in Chicago has already prompted the FDIC to bring the NATF's innovations to other districts. Programs are underway in Charlotte/Raleigh, Boston, Austin, Kansas City and Los Angeles. More FDIC districts are scheduled to adopt similar initiatives. |
You say that the Bush administration and the GOP tried to rein in FM/FM. Your assertion flies in the face of the facts of the actions they took.
|
Park Place South is, in microcosm, the story of a well-intentioned policy gone awry. Advocating homeownership is hardly novel; the Clinton administration did it, too. For Mr. Bush, it was part of his vision of an “ownership society,” in which Americans would rely less on the government for health care, retirement and shelter. It was also good politics, a way to court black and Hispanic voters. But for much of Mr. Bush’s tenure, government statistics show, incomes for most families remained relatively stagnant while housing prices skyrocketed. That put homeownership increasingly out of reach for first-time buyers like Mr. West. So Mr. Bush had to, in his words, “use the mighty muscle of the federal government” to meet his goal. He proposed affordable housing tax incentives. He insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac meet ambitious new goals for low-income lending. Concerned that down payments were a barrier, Mr. Bush persuaded Congress to spend up to $200 million a year to help first-time buyers with down payments and closing costs. And he pushed to allow first-time buyers to qualify for federally insured mortgages with no money down. Republican Congressional leaders and some housing advocates balked, arguing that homeowners with no stake in their investments would be more prone to walk away, as Mr. West did. Many economic experts, including some in the White House, now share that view. The president also leaned on mortgage brokers and lenders to devise their own innovations. “Corporate America,” he said, “has a responsibility to work to make America a compassionate place.” And corporate America, eyeing a lucrative market, delivered in ways Mr. Bush might not have expected, with a proliferation of too-good-to-be-true teaser rates and interest-only loans that were sold to investors in a loosely regulated environment. “This administration made decisions that allowed the free market to operate as a barroom brawl instead of a prize fight,” said L. William Seidman, who advised Republican presidents and led the savings and loan bailout in the 1990s. “To make the market work well, you have to have a lot of rules.” But Mr. Bush populated the financial system’s alphabet soup of oversight agencies with people who, like him, wanted fewer rules, not more. The president’s first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission promised a “kinder, gentler” agency. The second was pushed out amid industry complaints that he was too aggressive. Under its current leader, the agency failed to police the catastrophic decisions that toppled the investment bank Bear Stearns and contributed to the current crisis, according to a recent inspector general’s report. As for Mr. Bush’s banking regulators, they once brandished a chain saw over a 9,000-page pile of regulations as they promised to ease burdens on the industry. When states tried to use consumer protection laws to crack down on predatory lending, the comptroller of the currency blocked the effort, asserting that states had no authority over national banks. The administration won that fight at the Supreme Court. But Roy Cooper, North Carolina’s attorney general, said, “They took 50 sheriffs off the beat at a time when lending was becoming the Wild West.” The president did push rules aimed at forcing lenders to more clearly explain loan terms. But the White House shelved them in 2004, after industry-friendly members of Congress threatened to block confirmation of his new housing secretary. "In the 2004 election cycle, mortgage bankers and brokers poured nearly $847,000 into Mr. Bush’s re-election campaign, more than triple their contributions in 2000, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The administration did not finalize the new rules until last month." Among the Republican Party’s top 10 donors in 2004 was Roland Arnall. He founded Ameriquest, then the nation’s largest lender in the subprime market, which focuses on less creditworthy borrowers. In July 2005, the company agreed to set aside $325 million to settle allegations in 30 states that it had preyed on borrowers with hidden fees and ballooning payments. It was an early signal that deceptive lending practices, which would later set off a wave of foreclosures, were widespread. Andrew H. Card Jr., Mr. Bush’s former chief of staff, said White House aides discussed Ameriquest’s troubles, though not what they might portend for the economy. Mr. Bush had just nominated Mr. Arnall as his ambassador to the Netherlands, and the White House was primarily concerned with making sure he would be confirmed. “Maybe I was asleep at the switch,” Mr. Card said in an interview. Brian Montgomery, the Federal Housing Administration commissioner, understood the significance. His agency insures home loans, traditionally for the same low-income minority borrowers Mr. Bush wanted to help. When he arrived in June 2005, he was shocked to find those customers had been lured away by the “fool’s gold” of subprime loans. The Ameriquest settlement, he said, reinforced his concern that the industry was exploiting borrowers. In December 2005, Mr. Montgomery drafted a memo and brought it to the White House. “I don’t think this is what the president had in mind here,” he recalled telling Ryan Streeter, then the president’s chief housing policy analyst. It was an opportunity to address the risky subprime lending practices head on. But that was never seriously discussed. More senior aides, like Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s chief political strategist, were wary of overly regulating an industry that, Mr. Rove said in an interview, provided “a valuable service to people who could not otherwise get credit.” While he had some concerns about the industry’s practices, he said, “it did provide an opportunity for people, a lot of whom are still in their houses today.” The White House pursued a narrower plan offered by Mr. Montgomery that would have allowed the F.H.A. to loosen standards so it could lure back subprime borrowers by insuring similar, but safer, loans. It passed the House but died in the Senate, where Republican senators feared that the agency would merely be mimicking the private sector’s risky practices — a view Mr. Rove said he shared. ‘We Told You So’ Armando Falcon Jr. was preparing to take on a couple of giants. A soft-spoken Texan, Mr. Falcon ran the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, a tiny government agency that oversaw Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two pillars of the American housing industry. In February 2003, he was finishing a blockbuster report that warned the pillars could crumble. Created by Congress, Fannie and Freddie — called G.S.E.’s, for government-sponsored entities — bought trillions of dollars’ worth of mortgages to hold or sell to investors as guaranteed securities. The companies were also Washington powerhouses, stuffing lawmakers’ campaign coffers and hiring bare-knuckled lobbyists. Mr. Falcon’s report outlined a worst-case situation in which Fannie and Freddie could default on debt, setting off “contagious illiquidity in the market” — in other words, a financial meltdown. He also raised red flags about the companies’ soaring use of derivatives, the complex financial instruments that economic experts now blame for spreading the housing collapse. Today, the White House cites that report — and its subsequent effort to better regulate Fannie and Freddie — as evidence that it foresaw the crisis and tried to avert it. Bush officials recently wrote up a talking points memo headlined “G.S.E.’s — We Told You So.” But the back story is more complicated. To begin with, on the day Mr. Falcon issued his report, the White House tried to fire him. (See: White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire) |
The Youtube video to which you refer was the video put out by the Bush administration that tried to blame the financial meltdown on the Clinton and Obama administrations.
Can you provide a link to the video in question?
Can you cite which actions the GOP took and when to rein in FM/FM?
Why do no Mexican banks accept their own government's Matricula Consular card as ID to open a Mexican bank account?
Now that you have read all details, I'll answer my own question.
The reason why no Mexican banks accept their own government's Matricula Consular card as ID to open a Mexican bank account is that the bearer's identity is all but untraceable.
In other words, it's an official Mexican government-issued phony ID designed expressly to allow illegal alien Mexican nationals to enter into the US banking system using whatever identity they choose.
To the benefit of Wall Street bankers and Mexican nationals with US taxpayers picking up the tab. Again.
All thanks to Bush.
That was after the damage had been done.
With a GOP majority in Congress and a Bush in the WH from 2001 to 2006 why was there no major reform of FandF?
Bush put two political cronies and "minorities" (Mel Martinez and Alphonso Jackson) in as Sec's of HUD under whose oversight FanF fell. Why? To further his plan of using home sales and property taxes to expand govt. He didn't care who bought the houses as long as someone did so he could claim credit.