Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice.
ACORN’s first big target in Chicago was Bell Federal Savings and Loan Association. While poring over the ACORN archives at the Wisconsin Historical Society, I ran across the extensive preparation ACORN Chicago made for that first battle, including lots of correspondence with Bell Federal itself.
What struck me reading over the documents was Bell Federal’s naive confidence in its position. They knew that they’d treated all their mortgage customers the same, regardless of race–in fact they were proud of this–and Bell rightly insisted that undercutting credit standards in the name of supposed fairness was the surest way to financial disaster. Little did Bell Federal suspect the assault about to be launched against it–the massive campaign to portray it as a nest of evil, racist capitalists, with the usual bogus statistical claims that anything less than total equality of result meant discrimination.
True, the Bush administration did far too little to challenge the bad credit practices first solidified by Fannie Mae under Clinton administration pressure. And yes, Wall Street did far too much to exploit the irresponsible subprime regime of its day, leading to disaster in 2008. But responsible capitalism didn’t go down without a fight. I think of Bell Federal’s naive and noble–but doomed–resistance to ACORN, and Fannie Mae’s equally bitter battle to hold ACORN at bay–well before the horror story recounted by Morgenson and Rosner played out. It took a lot of heavy lifting by ACORN and its supporters to break down years of prudent business practice, embodied in the credit standards all sane bankers once rightly insisted on. Only after those standards were compromised did we reap the whirlwind.
Obama was intimately familiar with the battle to undermine America’s credit standards, and in full philosophical sympathy with it. It took a one-two punch of Alinskyite intimidation and federal regulatory pressure to create the preconditions for the subprime crisis of 2008, and Obama was on board for all of it. Yet he managed to convince the country, with barely a peep to the contrary from McCain, that the real problem was the lack of regulation.
The dear leader of the media party.
The elite are comprised of brainwashed victims of what passes for post-secondary education.
The root cause is our corrupted universities.
Defund all non exact science faculties now.
and it’s happening again…but now welfare counts as income for mortgage approval…bye-bye USA…it was nice knowing you
Holder Launches Witch Hunt Against Biased Banks
By PAUL SPERRY, INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 07/08/2011 06:51 PM ET
In what could be a repeat of the easy-lending cycle that led to the housing crisis, the Justice Department has asked several banks to relax their mortgage underwriting standards and approve loans for minorities with poor credit as part of a new crackdown on alleged discrimination, according to court documents reviewed by IBD.
Prosecutions have already generated more than $20 million in loan set-asides and other subsidies from banks that have settled out of court rather than battle the federal government and risk being branded racist. An additional 60 banks are under investigation, a DOJ spokeswoman says.
No Job, No Problem
Settlements include setting aside prime-rate mortgages for low-income blacks and Hispanics with blemished credit and even counting “public assistance” as valid income in mortgage applications.
In several cases, the government has ordered bank defendants to post in all their branches and marketing materials a notice informing minority customers that they cannot be turned down for credit because they receive public aid, such as unemployment benefits, welfare payments or food stamps.
Among other remedies: favorable interest rates and down-payment assistance for minority borrowers with weak credit.
For example, the government has ordered Midwest BankCentre to set aside almost $1 million in “special financing” for residents living in predominantly black areas of St. Louis. The program includes originating conventional home loans at fixed prime rates for African-American borrowers “who would ordinarily not qualify for such rates for reasons including the lack of required credit quality, income or down payment.”
The same federal order, signed last month, praises Midwest for adopting “less stringent underwriting criteria” while under investigation.
In the case against Citizens Bank of Detroit, settled in May, the U.S. decrees that “the bank may choose to apply more flexible underwriting standards in connection with the programs under this order.”
Such efforts risk recreating the government-imposed lax underwriting that led to the housing boom and bust, critics fear.
“It’s absolutely outrageous after what we’ve just gone through,” said former Rep. Ernest Istook, a Heritage Foundation fellow. “How can someone both be financially stable enough to merit a mortgage at the same time they’re on public assistance? By definition, you don’t have the kind of employment that can support such a loan.”
Justice March
Justice spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa said the anti-discrimination notice “does not compel the banks to make loans to people who do not qualify.” She said such measures are “essential to remedy the harmful effects of the banks’ conduct.”
But industry analysts fear Attorney General Eric Holder is rekindling an anti-bank witch hunt launched by Attorney General Janet Reno in the 1990s, when Holder served as her deputy.
Some blame that in part for the subprime boom, because banks were ordered to throw open their lending windows to credit-poor minorities. That crackdown spurred the American Bankers Association to distribute to its thousands of members “fair-lend ing tool kits” advising the adoption of more permissive underwriting criteria to help inoculate them from prosecution.
In the new prosecutions, Justice acknowledges in every case it did not prove charges of intentional discrimination, while banks have denied any wrongdoing. Many, in fact, earned outstanding ratings from anti-redlining regulators enforcing the Community Reinvestment Act.
Istook calls Holder’s crusade an “egregious overreach by the government.” He says many of the targets are smaller banks without the resources to fight a protracted legal battle.
The House Judiciary Committee plans to investigate.
“This is an expansion of the law,” said a congressional investigator. “They’re pushing the envelope as far as they can go in the enforcement of civil rights.”
DOJ Demands ‘Nondisclosure’
As part of settlement deals, prosecutors have required banks to sign “nondisclosure agreements” barring them from talking about the methods used to allege discrimination. Bank lawyers contend the prosecutors are trying to hide the shaky legal grounds on which the cases are built. “It’s horrible what they’re doing at the civil rights division,” said Reginald Brown, a partner at Wilmer Hale in Washington, who has represented banks in connection to recent race-bias investigations. “They don’t have any proof, just theories.”
He added, “They want you to sign something saying you agree, under the condition of any settlement with them, that you won’t disclose what their theories were. That’s because their theories are loopy and wouldn’t stand the light of day.”
One such theory — “disparate impact” — holds that merely a difference in loan application outcomes is enough to prove racial discrimination — even if no intent exists on the part of loan officers to contrast based on the color of applicants, and even legitimate business factors — such as credit scores and down payments — help explain disparities in loan outcomes between white and black applicants.
Under this broad theory, banks have been accused of racism simply for failing to open branches or aggressively market mortgages in black neighborhoods — regardless of the demand for, or viability of, such loans in those areas.
Following this theory, the government has ordered several banks to advertise in black media and open branches in black neighborhoods, despite the weak economy.
Justice confirmed it has asked banks to keep its methodologies, which include computer-based statistical analysis, secret.
“In certain circumstances, when a bank has requested details of our analysis, the department has requested that a defendant agree to a confidentiality agreement,” Hinojosa told IBD.
Critics say Holder’s interpretation of civil-rights law is even more radical than Reno’s.
For the first time, prosecutors are judging banks for the secondary impact their policies have on entire minority communities, not just households. And they’re ordering reparations accordingly.
In announcing a recent $2 million settlement with Dallas-based PrimeLending, Civil Rights Division chief Tom Perez said, “We will require lenders to invest in the community that they’ve harmed.”
Another Reno protege, Perez has compared bankers to Klansmen. Only difference is, he said, bankers discriminate “with a smile” and “fine print.” He said this kind of racism, though more subtle, is “every bit as destructive as the cross burned in a neighborhood.”
Perez has put in place an infrastructure to enforce “fair lending” — including a first-of-its-kind Fair Lending Unit staffed with more than 20 lawyers, economists and statisticians.
He’s appointed a special lending cop to run it — Special Counsel for Fair Lending Eric Halperin, who also worked for Reno. Before returning to Justice, Halperin was chief Washington lobbyist for the Center for Responsible Lending, an anti-redlining group that urged banks to relax lending standards for low-income urban borrowers before the crisis.
Perez has required bank defendants to earmark potentially millions in funding for inner-city community organizers — who must be approved by Justice. Critics say lenders are being forced to bankroll Acorn clones that often exist just to shake them down for risky loans.
Hinojosa declined to provide a list of these “qualified organizations.”
Perez is also prosecuting banks for “reverse redlining through the targeting of minority communities for predatory loans.”
Istook finds it odd that the government is condemning lenders for doing too well what it pressured them to do in the name of diversity before the crisis. “Banks are damned if they do, damned if they don’t,” he said.
Also, critics say Justice is acting as a bank regulator by enforcing its own quota system for multicultural loans. The civil rights division has set “benchmarks” for minority lending, and will monitor bank lending volume and activity in that area among the banks it’s suing.
In effect, Justice is using private banks to carry out affirmative-action lending, Istook says, a campaign he describes as “legal plunder.”
and it’s happening again…except now, welfare counts as having income to qualify for a mortgage…
I bring this up every time I talk to an Obama lover, about Acorn’s race-baiting tactics to get mortgages for people who had no business having one.
“Barack Obama is President because millions of Americans don’t pay attention, aren’t well informed, are gullible and/or throw temper tantrums in the voting booth. There was plenty of evidence about who Barack Obama is and what direction he would take our country, but folks listened to the commanding voice, got caught up in the grandiose spectacle and ignored the political charlaton behind the curtain.”
I thought this first comment by “Jenna” was worth posting here. Too many voters do exactly THAT!
If there IS any justice in the world,Obama should be soundly beaten in 2012, but we’ll see the weary warriors of the MSM gear up soon to destroy whomever the Other Side chooses to run against their deeply flawed Messiah.
So it’ll either be a close election win for the Others with lots of cries of voting fraud and disenfranchised minorities,or,if enough voters do as “Jenna” mentioned, another Obama mudslide.
Is it my imagination, or has America been plunged into the pages of an Ayn Rand novel?
When you consider how the Obama administration is decimating the lives of millions, he may well be known in the future as “The Economic Black Plague”.
Obama is closer than that. In the Nineties, while he was still allowed to practice Law, his name was on a suit brought against Citibank on behalf of ACORN claiming racial discrimination in their mortgage lending practices. You would think that the media would at least want to come out of his orifice’s (or off his appendages) once in a while for air or perhaps a mouth wash but no….. nothing to see here folks.
Rabbit – Rand was an optimist!
In addition to treason nationally, Obamba needs to be charged and tried for crimes against humanity globally.
Of course he’s only following orders. We heard it all before at Nuremburg.
USA currently run by people who think “1984” was a how-to-do-it manual.
We continue to make the false presumption that a good education translates into intelligence. Many of the people in top government positions are completely devoid of the most basic common sense, yet retain the ability to remain brainwashed long after swallowing the nonsense fed to them by many of the far left professors. The real world is something they have never been involved in. These are the people Obama surrounds himself with. These are the people driving the bus off the cliff. Well educated and dumb as a stick.
If you have read “Atlas Shrugged” be prepared to pack and move to Colorado if you read “Reckless Endangerment”. Placing names, Such as Barack “Mr. Thompson” Obama is a slam dunk.
Please!! American Voters do not continue this slide to chaos any longer than legally possible and be especially vigilent while the legal processes and voting opportunities unfold.
Please!! Canadian Voters recognize the “looters”, American; European; and the few Canadian versions capable of moving in the rarified atmospere of this effort to wrest control of Western Civilization from ordinary people having even a small say in their future. not cheerful!
The Phantom >
That is neither a sarcastic or farfetched statement!
Nearly everything in Orwell’s 1984 applies today to one degree or another, simply dressed up in modern technical clothing and lingo.
The left mimics all aspects of “Newspeak” perfectly, working solely as “Big Brothers” voice of insanity. Fear, manufactured foreign wars, false flags, loss of freedoms and liberties, constant surveillance, inner party elite’s etcetera……..
Western governments do not respond to the people anymore, in fact they are not even pretending to listen now. Unchecked illegal immigration with all its known hazards in addition to massive public disarmament programs should have been the reality slap in the face to average people educated or not.
The left and their Marxist utopian ideals (conscious or unconsciously) have led western nations down a slippery slope towards Orwell’s insights of Elitist totalitarian rule. They were listening, everyone else not so much.
And here in Ontario, our economy and future sits ruined because a small number of enviro-parasites churn out legislation that their pet puppet, Dalton, implements.
But, other than from the Ontario Landowners, where were the dissenting voices?
Small comfort in repeating “We told you so”.
The fact that Obama was council for ACORN when the financial institutions were basically blackmailed into providing loans to borrowers that did not meet the recognized criteria for being approved has never been made an issue in the MSM. I question why the Republicans have not used this information.
Here is a site that chronicles some of his involvement with ACORN.
http://www.theobamafile.com/ObamaACORN.htm
All forms of media focus on blaming the Tea Party for any grievance no matter how trivial
“And here in Ontario, our economy and future sits ruined because a small number of enviro-parasites churn out legislation that their pet puppet, Dalton, implements”
Agree that is the kind of soul searching that we need to do to find our Fannies (Dalton sure can’t find his) and ACORNs. We have shake down artists in our midst too, so beware.
Our shakedowns come in the form of billions for eHealth and for the cronyism between Ontario Hydro and the Liberals at Queens Park.
Furthermore the placement of Turmel as head of our LOYAL opposition is just another Faustian game no different than the subprime government intervention into the US mortgage business. Turmel was head of a monopolistic government union that’s capable of holding us taxpayers to ransom for massive claims; all in the name of social justice and equality.
When you add it all up, we have the same toxic cocktail brewing right under our noses as the US had with the “horror story recounted by Morgenson and Rosner”
You can smell Barney Frank from way over here.
The fact that Obama was council for ACORN when the financial institutions were basically blackmailed into providing loans to borrowers that did not meet the recognized criteria for being approved has never been made an issue in the MSM. I question why the Republicans have not used this information.
Posted by: Dennis K at August 5, 2011 2:02 PM
Dennis, this excellent essay by the estimable Sultan Knish (Daniel Greenfield) doesn’t directly target your question but is a good description of the complete dysfunctionality of the Government Economy of the US of A. In other words, Dems-Repubs = Coke-Pepsi.
Government Amateurs vs Government Professionals.
Knight99 said: “That is neither a sarcastic or farfetched statement!”
Scary isn’t it? Many years ago I started saying that ironically, but as with most other attempts to lampoon the Left, they one-upped me. Orwell divined the true nature of the Enemy and put it on paper, now they are revealing that nature more and more every day.
Next question, do we want to be Spartans or slaves in the Persian army? I’ve voting Spartan, I’ve always looked good in a kilt.
NomdeBlog, our ruination in Ontario started a damn sight earlier than Dalton McGuinty. Hamilton began disintegrating in the 1970’s under Trudeau’s watch and Big Bill Davis didn’t do much to save things. After that its all been down hill. McGuinty just opened the tap a little wider.
Voter fraud and intimidation was also a factor in getting BHO elected. methinks alot more people will be watching alot closer next election.
“…our ruination in Ontario started a damn sight earlier than Dalton McGuinty. Hamilton began disintegrating in the 1970’s under Trudeau’s watch and Big Bill Davis didn’t do much to save things. After that its all been down hill. McGuinty just opened the tap a little wider.”
Posted by: The Phantom at August 5, 2011 5:23 PM
Aye. And a majority of the PCs sitting today in Queen’s Park (many of them representing rural ridings) raised their hands like the sheep they are and voted for the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act – two pieces of legislation that trample all notions of property rights into the dirt.
Again we see the “political correctness” agenda in action.
The main purpose of all the anti-discrimination measures is to recruit minorities, immigrants, and other so-called “victim” groups generally to become a substitute working class for the purpose of overthrowing capitalism. Labour was too busy and productive, and reasonably contented, to be willing to do the dirty work that Marxist theory predicted it would.
But collaterally, many of these same measures can be counted on to do an enormous amount of economic damage in their own right, as in the depredations of ACORN against innocent companies seen here.
And once again, it is “Law Enforcement” that is the enabler for this swill.
b-b-b-b-but… deregulation is the way to go !!!
just ask any of ronnie raygun’s aging cronies.
– air traffic controllers,
– junk bonds supremo,
– james watt,
– etc etc
Isn’t it wonderful when the graduates of America’s best university are educated to run its technocracy?