| akuma587 said: Forced to make bad loans? Please show me evidence that they were FORCED to make these loans. They were HAPPY to make them and the banking firms actively encouraged their employees to make them. Everyone was making so much money on the primary and secondary mortgage markets that they never thought it would come back to bite them in the ass. |
How about an ACORN lawsuit Obama was involved in against Citibank back in '94? The complaint was about alleged red-lining...unfortunately red-lining has been warped and is now more or less code for "refusing to give loans to people who can't afford them". Red-lining became the bludgeon in what ACORN saw as a great way to get poor folks in bad neighborhoods (that a lot of ACORN workers are from) into houses for "FREE!". Of course we both know they aren't actually free...ACORN probably did too honestly...
In any case it was groups like ACORN, with lawyers like Obama, under tortured or abused legislation (like the CRA revisions pushed by ACORN from 95 that would come later) that was used to push this stuff.
Actually there is a quote from Janet Reno around this time about how it is unacceptable for banks to base their lending practices on the financial status of their customers....I'm only slightly paraphrasing that sadly.
The real question is how prevalent this practice was, which I don't know but the indications I've seen make me think it was significant. In any case banks were absolutely forced to give bad loans in some cases. Most of the time though, particularly after the CRA revisions, the banks were content to go along with it because the revisions set it up so that GSEs like Fannie and Freddie would buy the loan from the bank and the bank would be more or less off the hook...so they stopped fighting it since it wasn't their dime anymore. So we could technically still pin this on banking greed because they chose not to risk themselves to say no to it...those greedy bastards!
PS - All of this info came out before the election even, so its no surprise most won't have heard of it =P
@thread,
I've been hearing that numbers for the tea parties will be coming out today that put the number of attendees in the 1 to 1.2 million range. I have no idea how they intend to explain the massive jump from the 300 to 500k numbers that came out originally (I'm ignoring the 200k and 600k estimates as most came from groups with an interest to swell or shrink the numbers, and Averages are generally more reliable in this issues). They are saying 856 events with 300ish having good solid counts and the rest being estimates. Should be amusing to watch folks fight over the final number.
Regardless it is pretty obvious the movement isn't going anywhere though, they've already started to plan for 4th of July events. In a change of pace though they aren't doing it as a protest but more of a picnic from what I've heard...their tentative slogan is something along the lines of "Declaring Independance from both political parties" or something to that effect. I seriously doubt it will detour most news outletts from using the fringes of the group to paint them all as nutjubs and Fox will probably devote another day of coverage with a week's leadup of adverts. I just get a kick out of it when I see people buy into some of the completely made up BS that gets thrown out there for people to soak up, from both sides.
As another relevant note, the DHS document that came out before tax day appears not to have been a coincidense in timing. Civil-liberties lawyers at HLS flagged some of the language in the report but it was ignored and pushed out the door (according to HLS spokeman Amy Kudwa)....so either they were rushing and ignoring warnings because they're incompetent or they had an agenda and a reason to push...I'm sure you guys can think of a few reasons why the administration might do that...but I'm just as likely to believe incompetence since it would certainly fit the trend (ie Obama's hard time with nominations thus far).
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| To Each Man, Responsibility |
