Back to you.

You’re not really expecting him to get back to you, I assume.

Well, first, let’s start with the fact that the article you linked to got the name of the legislation wrong.

They refer to it as the Community Redevelopment Act.
It is, of course, the Community Reinvestment Act.

If the article’s authors can’t even bother to check this most basic fact, why on earth should we expect that they bothered to check any of the facts involved in this situation? What little actual facts are present in it, that is.

For the facts, we have to go to the reality based community:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=did_liberals_cause_the_subprime_crisis

If you compare and contrast the IBD article to the American Prospect article and you have a classic illustration of how the right wing noise machines dupes it’s targets through the deployment of sinister and vague accusations in a fact free environment.

Hell, the IBD article doesn’t even define the institutions regulated by the CRA. in reading it, you’d never know, as others above have pointed out, that the CRA only impacted federall insured banks and thrifts and that “half of sub-prime loans came from those mortgage companies beyond the reach of CRA” as noted in the American Prospect article which goes on to state:

A further 25 to 30 percent came from bank subsidiaries and affiliates, which come under CRA to varying degrees but not as fully as banks themselves. (With affiliates, banks can choose whether to count the loans.) Perhaps one in four sub-prime loans were made by the institutions fully governed by CRA.

Most important, the lenders subject to CRA have engaged in less, not more, of the most dangerous lending. Janet Yellen, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve, offers the killer statistic: Independent mortgage companies, which are not covered by CRA, made high-priced loans at more than twice the rate of the banks and thrifts. With this in mind, Yellen specifically rejects the “tendency to conflate the current problems in the sub-prime market with CRA-motivated lending.? CRA, Yellen says, “has increased the volume of responsible lending to low- and moderate-income households.”

The IBD article also only includes a single date in its entirety, (“”early 2005″)a date marking an event that’s totally unrelated to the CRA or the unfolding of the mortgage crisis.

Without a timeline, or at the very least some kind of timeframe, you can make anything seem connected. It’s much harder to do so when you actually use dates, as the American Prospect points out:

In the current mortgage meltdown, did lenders approve bad loans to comply with CRA, or to make money?

The evidence strongly suggests the latter. First, consider timing. CRA was enacted in 1977. The sub-prime lending at the heart of the current crisis exploded a full quarter century later. In the mid-1990s, new CRA regulations and a wave of mergers led to a flurry of CRA activity, but, as noted by the New America Foundation’s Ellen Seidman (and by Harvard’s Joint Center), that activity “largely came to an end by 2001.” In late 2004, the Bush administration announced plans to sharply weaken CRA regulations, pulling small and mid-sized banks out from under the law’s toughest standards. Yet sub-prime lending continued, and even intensified — at the very time when activity under CRA had slowed and the law had weakened.

Now that’s a lot of dates that actually present a pretty clear picture of how things unfolded over time.

In the absence of actual facts about the CRA, the IBD article segues into a rant against corporate compensation for Clinton supporters after its first five paragraphs before it last six devolve into typical conservative boilerplate about the evils of the New Deal and liberalism in general. In other words, most of the article is entirely unrelated to proving its central thesis.

So, Amused Observer, you ask which part of the article I would refute? How about all of it.

Back to you.

Used to be my name and email were retained by this site so that I never had to re-type them. A couple weeks ago this changed and now I have to enter them every time I post a comment, and a typo (yeah, sometimes I misspell my own name ) means things wait in moderation.

Anyone else have this. Is there something I need to do on my side to get back to how it was?

Obama McCain, speaking today:

We are going put an end to the reckless conduct, corruption, and unbridled greed that have caused a crisis on Wall Street.

Mr. McCain today suddenly saw the light on the hazards of lax oversight of financial markets.

You mean the IBD editorial? Just about every last word, including “and” and “the.”

Let’s start with this:

But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans…

“Obsessed with multiculturalism” is just silly name-calling. The IBD editorialist is referring to the Clinton administration’s revision of the 1977 Community Redevelopment Act. The act was passed by Congress to put an end to the practice of redlining, or systematic denial of credit in entire neighborhoods regardless of the qualifications of the prospective borrower. Neither the act nor the revision “dictated where mortgage lenders could lend.” Just the opposite, the act prevented lenders from excluding qualified borrowers because they live or do business on the “bad” side of town.

The Clinton-era revisions forced banks–those covered by federal deposit insurance–to prove their compliance with the act.

Now comes the slippery part of the editorial:

and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans…

The writer wants us to believe that the loans encouraged by the CRA are the ones that precipitated the subprime meltdown. But pay attention to the weasel words: “originally helped create…”

In fact, most subprime loans were issued by independent lenders–institutions NOT covered by the CRA. These loans were not made to conform with the Clinton administration’s “obsession with multiculturalism,” but for a far more mundane objective–to make money.

Independent lenders loaned money to unqualified borrowers, then turned and sold the loans to investors. In a real estate market where greedy investors assumed prices would go up forever, the collateral of real estate more than outweighed the risk of default.

Unfortunately for the lenders, “forever” came to an end too soon.

The IBD editorial continues with smear, insinuation, and outright deception. But having lied at the outset, they’ve killed my interest in researching the rest.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/09/20040902-5.html

It was a joke and many of us realized it was a joke 5 years ago because we knew the increase in home ownership was not accompanied by any increase in personal savings rates or middle class income. Quite the opposite…

And how was this increase in home ownership “accomplished?”

I dunno, maybe you could ask McCain advisor and General Prick, Phil Gramm, who spearheaded the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the Commodities Futures Modernization Act.

Are you guys fucking kidding me right now? Clinton hasn’t been in office for eight years. Seriously. You’re fucking delusional.

I’m glad that Pavlov did his experiments with dogs instead of conservatives, because you all are too stupid to see a basic A–>B relationship.

Liberals are full of feelings, reasons… not so much.

.

IOW, yeah, I pulled the trigger and shot the guy, officer. But the fault really lies with them damned Chinese who invented gunpowder in the first place and made it possible for me to shoot a bullet.

My opponent is running… His outrage at Wall Street… His call for fiscal responsibility… His newfound support for regulation… John McCain cannot be trusted.

Ah, FINALLY he names the guy.

I simply don’t understand the idea that mentioning your opponents name somehow benefits them. It makes the speaker sound evasive. Like they want to speak only in generalities, not use a specific name, so they have wiggle room in case someone tries to pin them down.

Say the damn name. Let people hear over and over again that John McCain is a liar, that John McCain is a hypocrite, that John McCain is totally lacking in ideas, that John McCain has no better clue about what to do than Bush did on 9/11.

We are going put an end to the reckless conduct, corruption, and unbridled greed that have caused a crisis on Wall Street.

My opponent is running… His outrage at Wall Street… His call for fiscal responsibility… His newfound support for regulation… John McCain cannot be trusted.
Ah, FINALLY. in the final sentence he actually gets around to naming the guy.

I simply don’t understand the idea that mentining your opponents name somehow benefits them. It makes the speaker sound evasive. Like they want to speak only in generalities, not use a specific name, so they have wiggle room in case someone tries to pin them down.

Say the damn name. Let people hear over and over again that John McCain is a liar, that John McCain is a hypocrite, that John McCain is totally lacking in ideas, that John McCain has no better clue about what to do than Bush did on 9/11.

Maybe you can’t, but Investors Business Daily can.

http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=306370789279709

Say did any of you notice who is #2 on the Fannie Mae/ Freddie Mac political payoff list? Not too bad for a freshman senator with no Senate record or accomplishments to his credit. Perhaps he was singled out because of his proven real estate dealmaking ability.

“Under Democratic regimes, we actually do, whether it means economic shock therapy or higher taxes. That’s leadership”

Good point, I understand that a fine example of Democratic leadership regarding higher taxes is the current chairman of the Ways and Means committee.

You just can’t make this stuff up, too funny!

I’d like to hear McCain–or any Republican–tell us why borrowing billions of dollars every year from foreign governments is a sustainable financial policy.

Oh stop it, you’re killin’ me!