Re: Rebutting canard that liberals caused the credit crisis


"El Castor" <No_One@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:43:10 -0500, "Harry Thompson" <me@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


"El Castor" <No_One@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dem2e4lj8fef345k7jhkf4p1jjfeugfqub@xxxxxxxxxx
On Mon, 29 Sep 2008 07:19:28 -0500, "Harry Thompson" <me@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


"El Castor" <No_One@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Sun, 28 Sep 2008 16:54:31 -0500, "Harry Thompson" <me@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Please allow me to be blunt. Anyone who claims that Democrats are not
responsible for the sub-prime crisis is a bald faced liar.

It's the other way around, El Castor.

I meant EXACTLY what I said, if you get my drift.

I assumed you did. Ideology snatched your mind and it will never let you
have it back.

Harry, if for a moment I believed Republicans were at fault, I would
say so. You Dems created FNMA and FHLMC, you coerced lenders into
making sub-prime loans, and you set up Freddie and Fannie as
facilitators and enablers. I spent nearly 30 years in banking. I saw
it happen. The bank I worked for NEVER would have discriminated
against a borrower because of the color of his skin, but that fact was
not nearly enough. All a lawyer had to do was demonstrate that X% of
the population of an area was Black, but Blacks only received X% of
the loans, and lenders looked like racist monsters. Banks were scared
shitless. They couldn't loan money to Black home buyers because they
failed the traditional credit requirements -- and the sub-prime loan
was born. So far so good, but the pressure didn't stop. Fannie and
Freddie were brought into the mix to the tune of more than a trillion
dollars. Banks were happy to make those crap loans as long as they
could unload them on Fannie and Freddie -- who repackaged the damn
things and infected the entire financial system with their crap. In
2003 when Bush warned of problems down the road and wanted to rein
them in, here's what Barney Frank had to say:

''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing
any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of
Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services
Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more
pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of
affordable housing.''
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

Affordable housing was and is a code word for minority housing --
which pretty much boils down to Black housing. Here's what Melvin
Watt, the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus had to say about
the same regulatory proposal:

"'I don't see much other than a shell game going on here, moving
something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the
bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get
affordable housing''

Get the picture? They didn't want Republican regulators mucking with
their money machine.

Two years later Chuck Hagel again tried to create an independent
regulatory body. Here's what his bill's co-sponsor, John McCain, had
to say about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

"I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory
Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage
of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act,
American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk
that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the
overall financial system, and the economy as a whole. I urge my
colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation."
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?r109:16:./temp/~r1094bchxF::

Democrats set the trap, enabled the crisis, ignored warnings, opposed
regulation, and you have the nerve to blame Republicans for this mess?

OK, I saved your post for study. I don't want to say something a little
wrong so I have to check things out.

My impression is that Fannie Mae helped people like me struggling to get
into the middle class more so than blacks. It strikes me as odd that the
poorest are blamed for a financial mess that the top income tiers financed.
And I don't mean banks or government agencies. I mean people with lots of
money looking for investments yielding better than more ordinary
investments, and of course investment houses responded creatively. I
remember a racist jingle in my youth that went:

Policeman, policeman don't arrest me,
Arrest that *** behind that tree,
He stole gold, I stole none,
Put him in the hoosegow just for fun.

It comes across as blaming the helpless.

But let me check. Be patient.


.