With financial times being what they are, can a resurgence of the Hobo Lifestyle be far behind? Get ahead of the curve, learn Hobo Signs (h/t Pete). These signs include such useful information as “kind woman,” “man with gun,” “worth robbing,” and perhaps most importantly given the circumstances, “town allows alcohol.”
We trace it back to the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, the first year Jimmy Carter occupied the oval office.
It by-passed the profit-motive component of the free market, forcing banks to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, mostly in minority areas. “Social justice” was the era’s code words for “socialism.”
It still is.
No intelligent argument could be formed against those whose wisdom opposed the intrusion. Rather, in true liberal Democratic form, opponents were labeled “racists.”
They still are.
And so, today, we have the Carter legacy: An an impending $700-billion hole in the economy.
Read here: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=306632135350949
oh kenn… you’re going to make me post this link a third time?
“Our study concludes that CRA Banks were substantially less likely than other lenders to make the kinds of risky home purchase loans that helped fuel the foreclosure crisis.”
I’m always impressed with number-scrubbing CPAs who pilfer data to enhance predetermined conclusions.
Left in the lurch are countless thousands of minority families who lost their homes due to big-government meddling.
Left holding the bag $700 billion bag were banks; now tax payers.
For intellectual enlightenment I offer Stan J. Liebowitz, economics professor at the University of Texas at Dallas.
He writes, “In an attempt to increase home-ownership, particularly by minorities and the less affluent, an attack on underwriting standards was undertaken by virtually every branch of the government since the early 1990s.”
And, “The decline in mortgage underwriting standards was universally praised as ‘innovation’ in mortgage lending by regulators, academic specialists, (government-sponsored enterprises) and housing activists.”
And, “Although a seemingly noble goal, the tool chosen to achieve this goal was one that endangered the entire mortgage enterprise.”
See Housing America: Building out of a Crisis by above.
Also see (from 1999) this glowing report from the LA Times heaping praise on the Carter/Clinton doctrine for screwing minorities before the bursting of the sub prime bubble:
http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/31/news/mn-42807
All the finger pointing in the World will not change the facts. The politically correct forces on the left side of the aisle pushed, prodded, and mandated relaxed underwriting. Most of us in the real estate industry have sold scads of homes financed under FHA loans to people with lousy credit histories because the only way to get them approved was FHA. The mortgage companies were using Fannie & Freddie FHA underwriting criteria, not in-house banking criteria. The whole freakin thing was a house of cards just waiting for a breeze.
Blame whomever you like, but these policies and procedures were NOT established, passed or enacted in the last eight years.
man, my irony alarm is going crazy. kenn complains of “predetermined conclusions” while completely ignoring evidence contrary to his expectations. tim decries finger-pointing while simultaneously pointing his finger at democrats.
it sure is funny how carter and clinton managed to make the mortgage crisis blow up only after eight years of a republican in the white house. that’s pretty sneaky of them.
Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.
How sweet of Phil Gramm to lobby for banking deregulation *for the poor*. What a great guy.
T…here’s what your boy Schumer had to say in 99….
http://www.nysun.com/editorials/schumers-straddle/86393/
and don’t leave out Barney Frank in 2003…crying how Fannie & Freddie were sound and were not doing enough to help people buy homes! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgctSIL8Lhs
check mate.
“Check Mate”?? Im thinking of The Princess Bride.
I dont think that [word] means what you think it means…
Yawn.
Most of the missing money was spent by white people.
They would buy a house for $150k, take out lines of credit for two or three times that, and then default. White people on Wall Street would cut up all those home equity lines into chunks and bundle them and sell them. Then other white people would do the same. Minorities weren’t buying sufficiently expensive houses in sufficient numbers to cause a problem this big, and Wall Street wasn’t getting rich on minority credit lines.