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Originally Posted by cobra de capell
Good points, but not the whole story. Yes, banks were pushed through CRA to make loans in poor communities and to poor people, but there were other 'pushers' as well - ACORN was always there to push the envelope and FANNIE/FREDDIE were there to buy the loans and sell them to investors (even sub-prime loans), and yes Wall Street was there to package loans into securities about 100 different ways as a way to confuse the market into thinking that they were dealing with A1 paper.
By the way, it's not Community Banks that are behind this mess - it's big banking and mortgage bankers like Countywide. Small banks rarely make long-term mortgage loans to families and when they do it's normal through a third-party mortgage broker or lender or they are immediately sold directly to FANNIE/FREDDIE.
The bottomline, the trigger was the lowering of standards at FANNIE/FREDDIE, prompted by the biggest pusher of all - Congress, specifically Democrats in Congress. Volume went through the roof - a lot of people got very, very rich. As an aside, Barney Frank was practically married to an Executive at Freddie during this whole fiasco that was one of the one's ending up rich. They broke up - that's why Barney is moaning about everything.
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As I said in my post, the CRA is one of the "holes in the economic dike."
As widespread as all its tendrils are. It does not stand alone. But ACORN, all the big banking/investment firms, abuses of mortgages etc. can ALL be laid right at the feet of Congress. They repealed good regulations to achieve their own single minded goal of pandering to the votes with the lowest purchase price. The abuses would not have happened without them removing safeguards against exactly what did happen. Did they foresee what would happen? No, their vision stops at the next election. Then goes to work on the next.
And the same THEY are going to fix the problem????????????????????
Dan