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.
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