Uh-oh...

[clocker]

[QUOTE=HeavyMetalParkingLot;3149525]

No, not saying it is. But it plays a big role. If the banks didn't have to make all these loans to uncreditworthy people they could have put this money to better use. If you had the option of loaning your money to someone who has shown through past performance that they take care of their debts or someone for the sake of "diversity" who would you choose?

No, it did NOT "play a big role".
Banks did NOT have to make loans to uncreditworthy people, they wanted to.
The more loans they made the bigger the collected fees...and what's the downside?
None, because they could package all these loans and sell them as instruments which Wall St. would call AAA, because Wall St. made a shitton of cash selling em.
So the banks were happy, Wall St. was happy, everybody was happy until the new loans started to dry up...because all the qualified borrowers already had loans.
What to do?
Offer loans to anyone who asked or anyone you could rope in...no risk since Wall St. was repackaging them and calling them riskless, so why not.

This mess was not the fault of poor people being foisted off onto poor, helpless banks.
Not a single part of the CRA forces a bank to make a loan to an unqualified person.
Banks/Wall St. brought this on themselves, primarily due to unbridled greed, not government intervention.

[HeavyMetalParkingLot]

I am sorry but you are wrong. Before the act was passed, banks used a practice known as "redlining". This is when instead of looking at an individual, they would look at the location where they lived. They would flat out not make a loan for any person living in areas they felt was too high risk.

The problem with that was these areas almost always were places that had a majority of minority residents.

This opened the door for groups such as Acorn to step in and claim racism.

This caused banks to have to give lower credit standards and high risk loans.

How can you say this didn't lead to the mortgage crisis which lead into the current economic problems?

[clocker]

The act did make redlining illegal because that practice eliminated a borrower solely on the basis of their location with no regard to their credit history.
Under redlining, Bill Gates would have been turned down for a loan if his address fell into a "bad" district.

What the act didn't do was force banks to ignore actual credit history/credit worthiness, they just couldn't use location as the primary determining factor.

Blaming the CRA for current problems also completely ignores the role that banks/Wall St. played after a risky loan was made.
Traditionally, loans were packaged for resale as securities (for consumption by investors) based on risk level...all the "good" loans were packaged together and since they had less risk, they returned less profit. "Bad" loans, which carried higher risk, earned more money.
The salient point is that the investor knew beforehand what he was buying and could balance the potential downside against the desire for profit.

Bundling all loans together- multiple times- meant that by the time the final security was offered for sale, no one knew what the package actually contained.
What was the percentage of safe to unsafe loans?
Who cared...there was lots of money to be made, and these "securities" were being rated AAA (most secure) by brokers eager for commissions.
Compounding the problem was the invention of the "credit default swap", in essence, an insurance policy to safeguard the purchase of the security.
In reality, another way for investment brokers to earn even more commissions.

All of this financial hocus-pocus was predicated on one simple- and demonstrably false- premise...housing prices would never fall, only continue to rise.

As long as housing prices rose, who cared if a borrower defaulted?
You just foreclose and then resell the property, making money on both sides of the deal (you've already made money on whatever the initial borrower paid before defaulting and now you get to resell the house at an even higher price).

Furthermore, both banks and investors were having so much fun (fun=making buttloads of cash, obviously) that they decided to expand the party by luring previously "good" borrowers into buying above their capability to repay...you could buy that McMansion that used to be out of reach because hey!, housing prices only go UP, so you can resell in a few years and make a tidy profit.
So everybody, from the homebuyer to the Wall St. investment buyer gets to make some money and the whole thing is risk free!.

Looking at this whole thing objectively it's apparent that it's really a house of cards and destined to fail.
At any given time there are only so many qualified buyers and housing prices only rise when it's a seller's market.
Unfortunately, there is one more component to this fiasco...what were the security buyers doing with all the profit they were making on all these bundled loans?
Reinvesting in real estate of course.

So, you have an ever shrinking pool of qualified buyers AND a growing pool of property to sell to them.
What a shock, real estate prices start to fall...who could have figured?

And another bubble bursts.

Now the banks are fucked...they own all these loans but they've mashed them up so extensively that no one can seperate the good from the bad.
Plus, they've insured all these securities, and now they're starting to fail, so they get billed twice- once for holding a bad loan and again by the buyer of the package they bundled it into.

So, you still think ACORN is the villain here?

[j2k4]

So, you still think ACORN is the villain here?

Yes, ACORN is one of the villains.

You think otherwise, apparently, and prefer not only to deflect some of the blame from ACORN, but ALL of it.

ACORN, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae...all of them, Democrat-inspired and controlled GSEs which operate hand-in-glove with Democrat leadership to favor and advance Democrat causes and constituencies.

Fact.

Truth.

Indisputably, too.

[clocker]

Oh, boo-hoo.

Democratic leadership is pursuing Democratic causes and constituencies...and the Republicans/conservatives are doing what?
Lobbying for the good of all mankind?

BTW, at some point it will become evident to you that posting "fact", "truth", and "indisputably" along with nonsense only proves you can spell, not that what you say is based in reality.
My favorite example of this is:

Take away his teleprompter and he's pretty fucking stupid, truth

This from a man who supported Bush through two disastrous terms and routinely spouts Fox News talking points as if they were gospel.

Fact.
Truth.
Indisputably, too.

[j2k4]

Oh, boo-hoo.

Democratic leadership is pursuing Democratic causes and constituencies...

And doing it with taxpayer money suits you fine?

and the Republicans/conservatives are doing what?

Perhaps they should get some taxpayer cash going into conservative versions of NPR, PBS, the ACLU, ACORN...Hell, why stop there - the "fairness doctrine" should work both ways, right?

So we want half the airtime on CBS, NBC, and ABC, and half the print media across the country.

In return (and, just to be "fair"), you can allot yourselves some time on radio.

[clocker]

Given that the Republicans are a political party- check it out, it's true, fact!- they are also quite adept at spending taxpayer money.
On Republican agenda type things.
In fact, we're just coming out of an eight year period where they did just that.

You know, on such popular and productive things like abstinence only sex education, bridges in Alaska and a war in Iraq.
Google 'em.

Poor conservatives...all the media is lined up against them.
I guess it makes sense to blame something as amorphous as "the media" for your lack of popularity rather than accept that you are spouting policies and ideals that the majority of America finds stale and repugnant.
So go ahead, keep up the good work.
Blame the media- or anyone else you can think of- rather than try to adapt to the times.
You'll lose even more seats in 2010/2012 and maybe wither away finally.

"Tax cuts, forever!"
YAY!

[j2k4]

you are spouting policies and ideals that the majority of America finds stale and repugnant.

Wrong on that count; besides which, I am a conservative...not a Republican.

Therein lies your problem.

Oh, and then there's this, which I'm sure you'd never mention:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...062300818.html

[clocker]

No, I would posit that being conservative is your problem and has nothing to do with me.

So now you're posting items from the Washington Post.
Aren't they the poster child for the "liberal media" you're so rabid about?
Or are they OK when they print something you like?

And you're right, I'd never mention that article.
Mainly because I see no relevance.
But, if you want to throw around weird and unrelated information, you can respond to this:conservative/religious states love porn.

So the same folks who profess to be religious, pray once a day and uphold conservative values are also the most avid consumers of porn.
Gee, is there a discrepancy there?

[devilsadvocate]

So the same folks who profess to be religious, pray once a day and uphold conservative values are also the most avid consumers of porn.
Gee, is there a discrepancy there?

Well in all fairness the most radical liberal person in history, the feminist Nancy Pelosi, married her high school sweetheart, stayed married without having an affair or use of a manwhore and has never had an abortion.

I'm sure that's reasonably accurate.