Someone finally said it
 

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pitt.../s_590330.html

Another interesting article from the New York Times in 1999.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...pagewanted=all

What do you mean, "finally"? I've been hearing this during the entire crisis.

We all know that this crisis was caused, in part, by how banks made it easier for people who had NO BUSINESS being homeowners to buy places far far beyond what they could afford. Just look at a list of neighborhoods affected the most by foreclosures...the demographics aren't a coincidence.

I think he means that a news source is finally pointing out that banks didn't just decide "Hey, let's stop making sure people are going to be able to pay us back before we loan them money, it'll work out great." To point out that the reason banks made these kinds of loans is because they were coerced to is a big difference from everyone just printing the garbage Barney Frank has been spewing about "Look what the greedy banks that the Republicans deregulated got us into."

No, no, no. I absolutely know that the banks were encouraged to lend to riskier people, as a way to right previous wrongs, the CRA being the most glaringly obvious example. Again...I've been hearing this for at least the past year and a half.

As long as we all remember that it doesn't have to be one or the other. Some garbage makes pretty good manure -- while the roots of the crisis include the CRA, "corporate greed" (for lack of a better term) and lax regulation can make some pretty good fertilizer.

I personally had never heard anything of it from the media other than a brief sound bite from Fox.

I don't watch much network news at all, unless I'm in an airport. Nothing against it, I'm just not home a lot to watch TV. I guess I just read a bunch of different papers with several viewpoints.

I go to realclearpolitics.com and read the articles that sound intriguing, this was one of them.

Here is a great article regarding this issue - it's the most fair and even handed one I've read:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/c...6375633.column

That's okay for a start, but I think anyone is better off reading/watching/listening to a variety of news sources from a variety of perspectives -- especially at least one or two news sources that typically do not represent your own views. You're not likely to get that with RCP.

Ummm... yes you are?

Their top section articles, just from today, are from Chicago Tribune, Time, LA Times, NY Times, Boston Herald, Salon, Washington Times, RCP, Huffington Post, Bloomberg, Indianapolis Star, National Review, Miami Herald, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and the Wall Street Journal. If you include the editorials you can add on New York Sun, Washington Post, and San Diego Union Tribune.

That seems to be a pretty wide variety and cover both sides of the political spectrum. Salon and the Huffington Post are both very liberal, a number of the others are kind of liberal/liberal slanted, WSJ is kind of conservative/conservative slanted and National Review and Washington Times are both pretty conservative.

Seems to me like they have it covered.

Maybe, though that hasn't been my (admittedly limited) experience with it. If they were pulling everything from all of those sources, maybe, but when you start deciding what to put up and what not to, I think perspective is going to come into play. Regardless of where they pull from, it has seemed to me that what they cull from those sources tips to the conservative side.

But maybe.

Bevan (one of the founders of RCP) is certainly conservative.

I think the news sections manage to stay pretty neutral. The political strategy analysis (both in their blogs and some of the articles suggesting strategies that they link to) are looking at strategy for Republican candidates more often I think, but I would guess that's more because of their audience.

Whatever, I read most of the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal most days (trying to have one leaning each way), so I'm going to RCP for the strategy analysis anyways.

RCP is very balanced but I must confess that I don't read the articles that I think I would dislike. I try to read at least one liberal article per day just to give me the other perspective but I read more conservative stuff. It's not that RCP doesn't allow me to, I choose to read 75% conservative articles.

http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site....weathersbee101


Commentary: Contrary to the Right-Wing Zealots’ Cries, Black People Did Not Create This Financial Crisis
Date: Wednesday, October 01, 2008
By: Tonyaa Weathersbee, BlackAmericaWeb.com

The lies and code just keep getting thicker.

....What I do know is that contrary to the rants of neo-conservative wingnuts like Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin, poor black people didn’t create this crisis. But when it’s an election year in which a black Democrat may very well wind up in the White House, and when you’re in the business of trying to exploit racial fears rather than expose truths, the facts tend not to matter much. It’s the code that counts.

...First of all, this sub-prime crisis isn’t a crisis that can be blamed on any expectations of entitlement or on attempts at fairer lending to minorities. The Community Reinvestment Act, for example, which requires banks to make loans in low-income communities that they serve, was enacted in 1977. But since George W. Bush took office, CRA regulations have been substantially weakened.

Given the fact that some 30 years have passed from the time a law was made to force banks to lend in low-income communities in their market areas to when this sub-prime meltdown began, and it defies credulity to blame the CRA for all this.

What defies credulity even further is the fact that the CRA doesn’t even cover most of the institutions that issued the sub-prime loans. According to Michael Barr, a law professor who specializes in banking and finance at the University of Michigan, half of those loans were made by mortgage companies, which the CRA doesn’t cover and which are loosely regulated, and another 25 percent came from bank subsidiaries and affiliates, which the CRA only partly covers.

So this crisis isn’t rooted in some “affirmative action” conspiracy to force banks to make more loans to minorities who can’t afford them. It is rooted in the greed of those who saw the sub-prime market as a means to exploit all kinds of people, poor and minorities included.

Okay CrakerBarrel and PhiGam, y'all are getting me to check RCP out more than I have in the past.