Do you know what is the "Community Re-investment Act"??

[Fogbuster]

.

You should, because it is destroying the economy right now, even as we speak and wait for Congress to get off its arse, correct its own mistakes, and take responsibility for them. I know, I know... but we can still dream, can't we?

Anyway, take a look:

YouTube - Burning Down The House: What Caused Our Economic Crisis?

//

[DarrylS]

Another you tube compilation, that is definitely biased and once again proves nothing.. anyone who grasps this stuff to be real and factual needs to examine their thought processes.

There are a variety of sources out there debunking this myth... here is are several.. Fog please do not read any of these, just be comfortable with the realization that you are right and there are no other answers,btw Coulter has written a column today or yesterday with the same story line..

The reality is that the CRA was not the major problem here, in fact there are studies that show a lower default rate amongst those who benefitted from this legislation. On the other hand, and quite anecdotally, know many people who have benefitted from this action and now live in their own homes.. it is the american dream and they have achieved.

One would think that a man who aspires to christian values as a lifestyle, might want to look at the other side to try to find some balance. That would be the intelligent approach...

FactCheck.org: Who Caused the Economic Crisis?

The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.

11 Racist Lies Conservatives Tell to Avoid Blaming Wall Street for the Financial Crisis | | AlterNet

Conservatives are twisting the facts beyond the breaking point to support their revisionist history. But don't be fooled: the financial crisis was caused by conservative financial follies and bankers run amok and nothing more.

Comments from Janet L. Yellen, President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

http://www.frbsf.org/news/speeches/2008/0331.html

I want to make one final point. There has been a tendency to conflate the current problems in the subprime market with CRA-motivated lending, or with lending to low-income families in general. I believe it is very important to make a distinction between the two. Most of the loans made by depository institutions examined under the CRA have not been higher-priced loans,16 and studies have shown that the CRA has increased the volume of responsible lending to low- and moderate-income households.17 We should not view the current foreclosure trends as justification to abandon the goal of expanding access to credit among low-income households, since access to credit, and the subsequent ability to buy a home, remains one of the most important mechanisms we have to help low-income families build wealth over the long term.

[Fogbuster]

Everybody in America knows that housing costs have sky-rocketed out of control for the past 20 years. Not just for "luxury" housing that Yuppies buy, but even basic housing, particularly in the big cities of America. Big city housing -- even that of the very lowest quality -- has sky-rocketed in price over the past 20 years. The cost of housing has risen at a rate that has been FAR in excess of the rate of inflation, which NEVER happened before in history.

BEFORE the passage of the CRA housing costs very closely followed the rate of inflation. My parents bought a decent fixer-upper in Needham in 1956 for $17,000, sold it 7 years later in '63 for $45,000; they had upgraded it, but nothing fancy, no hot tubs, not even a finished basement or attic, none of that; just re-doing the walls, floors, and ceilings, outside paint and a new roof, basically. The price of that same house today, with very little in the way of physical changes, is about $700,000. So the cost rise closely reflected the rate of inflation. This example is comparable to millions of examples in America in that era, ie, up until 1978, immediately AFTER the CRA had been voted into law.

The CRA caused a doubling, then a tripling, and even a quadrupling of this rate of inflation for housing costs. First time in American history this ever happened, and it all happened after the CRA was introduced under Carter and voted in by the Democrat dominated Congress.

Anybody can see in the video, YouTube - Burning Down The House: What Caused Our Economic Crisis?

and more details are easily found by Googling "Community Reinvestment Act". This act forced banks to give loans to people whom they knew could never re-pay them, and the banks did this because they were forced to grant these bad loans under penalty of law suit (see: Obama's own law firm arguing these law suits in the video). Many banks were sued in court, and Barack Obama himself participated in suing banks to force them to throw good money after bad.

Those are the facts, and any attempts by anyone to deny them are simply lies, plain and simple. I invite anyone to prove one thing in this video that is not true. Prove one false statement in the video, or accept it is all true.

//

[Patters]

So, do you support redlining, Fog? The CRA, which affected only about 15% of mortgages, was designed to prevent redlining, which was the tactic by banks to refuse to lend to minorities because they wanted to buy homes in their communities. Prior to the CRA, many banks would only lend to people who wanted to buy homes in what the bank considered good communities, which were almost always white. The CRA encouraged enormous investment in poorer areas, and for the most part worked. The foreclosure crisis has more to do with finance companies, which are not covered by the CRA, and with deregulation, which made it easier for finance companies to provide loans to less than qualified people. The crisis is a perfect example of the failure of Reagonomics that was all about deregulation and trusting companies to act in the public interest. Instead, these companies made enormous short and medium term gains for their large shareholders at the expense of America.

[Fogbuster]

When anybody forces anyone to do something they don't want to do, it is wrong. Unless you believe in totalitarianism, in which case one should man-up and say so. The Democrats never say it, but that is exactly what some of their hard-core cadre want more than anything else: Total socialism in America.

The CRA forced banks and lending institutions to give loans to people that had never proven their credit-worthiness, and now the tax-payers of America are being told by this Democrat-led Congress that they are on the hook for this horrific, dictatorial CRA law and its consequences.

Forcing honest, hard-working, and responsible tax-payers to pay for the vote-pandering this legislation was designed to produce is about the most immoral thing that anyone has ever done in Congress. It far exceeds any other financial scandal in U.S. history, by several magnitudes.

//

[Real World]

Originally Posted by GJAJ15

Another you tube compilation, that is definitely biased and once again proves nothing.. anyone who grasps this stuff to be real and factual needs to examine their thought processes.

There are a variety of sources out there debunking this myth... here is are several.. Fog please do not read any of these, just be comfortable with the realization that you are right and there are no other answers,btw Coulter has written a column today or yesterday with the same story line..

The reality is that the CRA was not the major problem here, in fact there are studies that show a lower default rate amongst those who benefitted from this legislation. On the other hand, and quite anecdotally, know many people who have benefitted from this action and now live in their own homes.. it is the american dream and they have achieved.

One would think that a man who aspires to christian values as a lifestyle, might want to look at the other side to try to find some balance. That would be the intelligent approach...

FactCheck.org: Who Caused the Economic Crisis?



11 Racist Lies Conservatives Tell to Avoid Blaming Wall Street for the Financial Crisis | | AlterNet



Comments from Janet L. Yellen, President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
I want to make one final point. There has been a tendency to conflate the current problems in the subprime market with CRA-motivated lending, or with lending to low-income families in general. I believe it is very important to make a distinction between the two. Most of the loans made by depository institutions examined under the CRA have not been higher-priced loans,16 and studies have shown that the CRA has increased the volume of responsible lending to low- and moderate-income households.17 We should not view the current foreclosure trends as justification to abandon the goal of expanding access to credit among low-income households, since access to credit, and the subsequent ability to buy a home, remains one of the most important mechanisms we have to help low-income families build wealth over the long term.



President's Speech: Opening Remarks to the 2008 National Interagency Community Reinvestment Conference (3/31/2008)

Read what that woman says. Their being higher priced or not, isn't the crux of the problem. IT's that the people who got them, can't afford to pay them back. It doesn't matter if you let someone borrow $100 at %5 interest, or $200 at 10% interest, if niether person ever had the means to pay it back in the first place. You've got to love how people play with words in this country. Honesty is a quality that lots of people have lost.

[Real World]

Originally Posted by Patters

So, do you support redlining, Fog? The CRA, which affected only about 15% of mortgages, was designed to prevent redlining, which was the tactic by banks to refuse to lend to minorities because they wanted to buy homes in their communities. Prior to the CRA, many banks would only lend to people who wanted to buy homes in what the bank considered good communities, which were almost always white. The CRA encouraged enormous investment in poorer areas, and for the most part worked. The foreclosure crisis has more to do with finance companies, which are not covered by the CRA, and with deregulation, which made it easier for finance companies to provide loans to less than qualified people. The crisis is a perfect example of the failure of Reagonomics that was all about deregulation and trusting companies to act in the public interest. Instead, these companies made enormous short and medium term gains for their large shareholders at the expense of America.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz............. ..

[Patters]

Originally Posted by Fogbuster

The CRA forced banks and lending institutions to give loans to people

Mistake 1: It only dealt with banks and savings & loans companies, but about 85% of mortgages are given out by other entities.

Originally Posted by Fogbuster

that had never proven their credit-worthiness, and now the tax-payers of America are being told by this Democrat-led Congress that they are on the hook for this horrific, dictatorial CRA law and its consequences.

Mistake 2: It died not force banks to give loans to people who were not credit worthy. It merely required banks to offer loans to people in neighborhoods where those banks had operations. So, if a bank has an office in Dorchester, it must be willing to give mortgages to credit worthy people in that neighborhood.

Originally Posted by Fogbuster

Forcing honest, hard-working, and responsible tax-payers to pay for the vote-pandering this legislation was designed to produce is about the most immoral thing that anyone has ever done in Congress. It far exceeds any other financial scandal in U.S. history, by several magnitudes.

If you bothered to look at something other than video and find some more objective sites, you might not have posted this video at all. It is factually inaccurate.

It's Still Not CRA | New America Blogs
Community Reinvestment Act had nothing to do with subprime crisis - BusinessWeek

[Fogbuster]

.

The CRA was the "door-way drug": it opened the way for other pernicious, predatory, evil practices to expand upon the foundation that the CRA provided. After all, when the Congress tells banks: "We will sue you unless you give loans to anybody who walks in and asks for a mortgage loan", then you know it is open season to get in on the action. And many other sharks were attracted to this very tempting bait, a baiting attraction that the sponsors of the CRA knew was built on a house of cards.

Gate-way drugs are just as evil as the drugs that finally put people in the grave after one usage.

//

[cupofjoe1962]

Andrew Cuomo and Fannie and Freddie
How the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history gave birth to the mortgage crisis

http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/541234


Cuomo's predecessor, Henry Cisneros, did that for the first time in December 1995, taking a cautious approach and moving the GSEs toward a requirement that 42 percent of their mortgages serve low- and moderate-income families. Cuomo raised that number to 50 percent and dramatically hiked GSE mandates to buy mortgages in underserved neighborhoods and for the "very-low-income." Part of the pitch was racial, with Cuomo contending that Fannie and Freddie weren't granting mortgages to minorities at the same rate as the private market. William Apgar, Cuomo's top aide, told The Washington Post: "We believe that there are a lot of loans to black Americans that could be safely purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac if these companies were more flexible