I hate it when poor, colored people screw up our economy and make our stock market loose 35% of it’s value in one year. Screw them! Via Mithras…
Daniel Gross in Newsweek:
The thesis is laid out almost daily on The Wall Street Journal editorial page and in the National Review. Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer provides an excellent example, writing that “much of this crisis was brought upon us by the good intentions of good people.” He continues: “For decades, starting with Jimmy Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, there has been bipartisan agreement to use government power to expand homeownership to people who had been shut out for economic reasons or, sometimes, because of racial and ethnic discrimination. What could be a more worthy cause? But it led to tremendous pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—which in turn pressured banks and other lenders—to extend mortgages to people who were borrowing over their heads. That’s called subprime lending. It lies at the root of our current calamity.” The subtext: if only Congress didn’t force banks to lend money to poor minorities, the Dow would be well on its way to 36,000. Or, as Fox Business Channel’s Neil Cavuto put it: “I don’t remember a clarion call that said: Fannie and Freddie are a disaster. Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster.”
Let me get this straight. Investment banks and insurance companies run by centimillionaires blow up, and it’s the fault of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and poor minorities?
These arguments are generally made by people who read the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, and ignore the rest of the paper—economic know-nothings whose opinions are informed mostly by ideology and, occasionally, by prejudice. Let’s be honest. Fannie and Freddie, which didn’t make subprime loans but did buy subprime loans made by others, were part of the problem. Poor congressional oversight was part of the problem. Banks that sought to meet CRA requirements by indiscriminately doling out loans to minorities may have been part of the problem. But none of these issues is the cause of the problem. Not by a long shot. From the beginning, subprime has been a symptom, not a cause. And the notion that the Community Reinvestment Act is somehow responsible for poor lending decisions is absurd.
He then sets forth the evidence of why it is absurd.
Blaming poor blacks and Hispanics for the financial crisis has a direct parallel to Jews being blamed for Weimar Germany’s hyperinflation and the deprivations caused by draconian economic punishments enforced by the French and British under the Treaty of Versailles. Many Germans, even sophisticated ones, could not wrap their minds around the abstract explanations of economic phenomenon. The Right readily supplies the answer to such anxiety and confusion by blaming it all on the Other within society which must accordingly be controlled, suppressed, punished – along with their political allies.
It’s always about “The Other” for the Right. They always need someone to victimize. It was Gays and Latino’s in ’04. “Welfare queens” in the 90′s. Liberals since the 60′s. There must be some psychological explanation for always having to defend your own existence by the exclusion of others. Maybe it has to do with the absolutism of religion, or maybe it’s like a pack of species (white christians) defending their territory. I’m not sure.
I do know though, come November 5th, “The Other” will have prevailed.
I seriously doubt that loans to illegal aliens brought down the entire economy LOL.
I don’t think he’s blaming minorities,he’s blaming the social engineers that wanted to give home ownership to those that couldn’t really afford it, and then denied stricter oversight because it didn’t jive with their ” big plan” The law of unintended consequences rears its head again. Oh yeah,trot out the race card too! So transparent
yeah i find it upsetting that they’d try and lay the blame of this fiasco on the home owners, and targeting minorities is especially callous. you can’t fault people for being told to their face they COULD afford these loans, when indeed those selling them often knew they rightly couldn’t.
just who are these mysterious and evil ‘social engineers’? are you talking ‘the’ intellectuals, elitists, liberal boogie men.
How are they able to make policy? They have no political might. They have corporate money. They have no educated populace to evaluate and support their agenda. They have no religious doctrine. Fuck if they even exist in human form, they are even godless…
why can the right not identify and name their ‘enemy’?
Because they use this fear to manipulate those who are afraid. Wake up and look around, this old manipulation agenda has been used before.
haven’t you felt these emotional strings pulled before by these same people? without any facts to support them-
“The Race Card”. Ha.
i mean, come on people, a terrorist? can’t we be a little more creative than that? that term is so 2002.
how about a covert-pinko-african-voodoo-constitutionalist? or a con-man performance artist pulling off the greatest creative work of the 21st century? something to spark my imagination at least.
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the funniest thing is, most these people would probably get better tax relief from obama than mccain. the self-hatred runs deep with this crowd i bet.
BB-Are you being manipulated? The left continues the fear mongering as well-those evil corporations,and oh my-Dick Cheney and his company Haliburton,and those,those fatcats on Wall Street.and those Christians-uh oh they’re trouble. And ,and Fox News (horror!)
Jus’ depends on who’s side your on.
as a citizen – my small share of the $800 billion to Wall st.- manipulation check
– went to war on a lie – manipulation check
– paying no-bid contracts to the war profiteers (Haliburton…) manipulation check
Fox News, no -don’t watch it
hey sleepy- we are all on the same side, we are getting raped by the people in power(Neocons)
and they are evil- they kill without remorse, they torture without regret, and they are above any law except maybe, their own interpretation of their god’s law.
BB-OK already with the hyperbole,ps-I’m not on the side of the lefties, and your opinions are not facts.