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Sorry. This started from my timidly venturing into ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
billroper's territory again, to comment on a proposal he's come up with for handling this bailout thingy. He linked, in passing, to a blog (The Volokh Conspiracy) which mentioned "disreputable activist group" ACORN Housing, so of course I had to look them up and find out that they were a non-profit organisation helping low income families and fighting predatory lending practices. And so, link by link, I came in the end to the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA), signed into law by Jimmy Carter, and apparently the source of all these woes.
It didn't do that much harm till the banking deregulation of the eighties (that mostly seems to have happened under Reagan and Bush 1), but the Clinton administration gave the CRA much more power, and things have been getting worse ever since. And what did this Act do? Well, here's a clue, from this article:
"threatening to undermine the efforts of the upwardly mobile poor by saddling them with neighbors more than usually likely to depress property values by not maintaining their homes adequately or by losing them to foreclosure."
This sounds familiar. Care to explain further, Mr Husock?
"A September 1999 study by Freddie Mac, for instance, confirmed what previous Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation studies had found: that African-Americans have disproportionate levels of credit problems, which explains why they have a harder time qualifying for mortgage money. As Freddie Mac found, blacks with incomes of $65,000 to $75,000 a year have on average worse credit records than whites making under $25,000."
Are you saying...?
"The new regulations de-emphasized subjective assessment measures in favor of strictly numerical ones."
Oh, right. The CRA stopped banks refusing loans to people because they were black. That's why the American economy is in such a mess. I see it all now. Check out the whole article if you think I'm taking these quotes out of context.
Isn't it funny how you can get from the land of the sane into complete racist lunatic territory in just a few links? Roper agrees with Volokh, who agrees with Bluecollarmuse, who quotes Husock, and suddenly I'm in Bizarro World.
I think I'm going to close all these tabs, clear my history, and go and have a cup of tea. Remind me not to do this again.
billroper's territory again, to comment on a proposal he's come up with for handling this bailout thingy. He linked, in passing, to a blog (The Volokh Conspiracy) which mentioned "disreputable activist group" ACORN Housing, so of course I had to look them up and find out that they were a non-profit organisation helping low income families and fighting predatory lending practices. And so, link by link, I came in the end to the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA), signed into law by Jimmy Carter, and apparently the source of all these woes. It didn't do that much harm till the banking deregulation of the eighties (that mostly seems to have happened under Reagan and Bush 1), but the Clinton administration gave the CRA much more power, and things have been getting worse ever since. And what did this Act do? Well, here's a clue, from this article:
"threatening to undermine the efforts of the upwardly mobile poor by saddling them with neighbors more than usually likely to depress property values by not maintaining their homes adequately or by losing them to foreclosure."
This sounds familiar. Care to explain further, Mr Husock?
"A September 1999 study by Freddie Mac, for instance, confirmed what previous Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation studies had found: that African-Americans have disproportionate levels of credit problems, which explains why they have a harder time qualifying for mortgage money. As Freddie Mac found, blacks with incomes of $65,000 to $75,000 a year have on average worse credit records than whites making under $25,000."
Are you saying...?
"The new regulations de-emphasized subjective assessment measures in favor of strictly numerical ones."
Oh, right. The CRA stopped banks refusing loans to people because they were black. That's why the American economy is in such a mess. I see it all now. Check out the whole article if you think I'm taking these quotes out of context.
Isn't it funny how you can get from the land of the sane into complete racist lunatic territory in just a few links? Roper agrees with Volokh, who agrees with Bluecollarmuse, who quotes Husock, and suddenly I'm in Bizarro World.
I think I'm going to close all these tabs, clear my history, and go and have a cup of tea. Remind me not to do this again.