Posted on 10/07/2008 9:58:07 AM PDT by neverdem
In the early 1990s I attended a conference designed to teach journalists the tools of an emerging field known as computer-assisted investigative reporting. One of the hottest sessions of the conference explained how journalists could replicate stories that other papers had done locally using computer tools, including one especially popular project to determine if banks in your community were discriminating against minority borrowers in making mortgages. One newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, had already won a Pulitzer Prize for its computer-assisted series on the subject, and others, including the Washington Post and the Detroit Free Press, had also weighed in with their own analysis based on government loan data. Everyone sounded keen to learn if their local banks were guilty, too.
Although academic researchers leveled substantial criticisms against these newspaper efforts (namely, that they relied on incomplete data and did not take into account lower savings rates, higher debt levels, and higher loan defaults rates for many minority borrowers), bank lending to minority borrowers still became an enormous issueâ€"mostly because newspaper reporters and editors in this pre-talk radio, pre-blogging era were determined to make it so. Editorialists called for the government to force banks to end the alleged discrimination, and they castigated federal banking regulators who said they saw no proof of wrongdoing in the data.
Eventually, the political climate changed, and Washington became a believer in the story. Crucial to this change was a Federal Reserve Bank of Boston study which concluded that although lender discrimination was not as severe as suggested by the newspapers, it nevertheless existed. This, then, became the dominant government position, even though subsequent efforts by other researchers to verify the Fed's conclusions showed serious deficiencies in the original work. One economist for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. who looked...
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearmarkets.com ...
Stupid, agenda-driven progressive journalists.
Of course lenders discriminate.
They WANT to make loans.....good loans.
They DO discriminate against poor credit risks. Sorry, but the blunt truth is that many of those, or more correctly, a disproportionate number of those poor credit risks are “persons of color”.
Established in 1959, the Joint Center is a collaborative unit affiliated with the Graduate School of Design and the Harvard Kennedy School. Through its rich array of research, education, and public outreach programs, the Joint Center serves as a convener for informed discussion on a broad range of issues in the housing sector of the nation's economy. In doing so, it educates business leaders, government officials, policy makers, and the public on critical and emerging factors affecting housing and our communities.
http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/aboutus/index.html
What would we do without the joint center's rich array of reasearch, education, and public outreach?? Save us, Sarah Palin, from these social engineer geeks with Ivy League credentials!
Congress could have simply set aside 700 billion dollars in 1977, and said: “We want persons who can’t afford homes to get them anyway. We are seizing 700 billion dollars from taxpayers in order to make portions of mortgage payments for homeowners who cannot otherwise make them.”
The bailout is simply the outcome of favoring one economic class over others, and scoring political points, via the ruse of first manipulating lending rules with law, and waiting for the various industries (real estate, mortgage, financial) to game the ruse until the house of cards finally collapses.
The bailout is not a crisis, it is simply the government finally writing a check for what it purchased back in 1977.
Mike B.
Richard F. Syron
President and Chief Executive Officer
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
<"In December 2007, Syron told financial analysts that he expected Freddie Mac would incur heavy losses because of the weakening housing market and rising mortgage defaults. [1] Despite these forecasts, and concerns over the fiscal stability of Freddie Mac due to larger-than-expected write-offs, Syron reportedly took home over $19 million in cash, stocks, and other executive compensation in 2007. [2] Mr. Syron was terminated September 6, 2008, under a Federal Housing Finance Agency plan for conservatorship of Freddie Mac. [3][4] It is unknown as of yet if he will receive a severance package.[5]"
SYRON, MARGARET CHESTNUT HILL,MA 02467 NONE/SPOUSE OF CHAIRMAN & CEO 5/16/07 $5,000 Freddie Mac SYRON, MARGARET M MRS CHESTNUT HILL,MA 02467 N/A/HOMEMAKER 3/27/07 $2,300 Dodd, Christopher J (D) SYRON, MARGARET M MRS CHESTNUT HILL,MA 02467 N/A/HOMEMAKER 3/27/07 $2,300 Dodd, Christopher J (D) SYRON, MARGARET M MRS CHESTNUT HILL,MA 02467 6/26/08 $-2,300 Dodd, Christopher J (D) SYRON, RICHARD CHESTNUT HILL,MA 02467 FREDDIE MAC/CHAIRMAN & CEO 6/19/07 $10,000 Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte (D) SYRON, RICHARD CHESTNUT HILL,MA 02467 FREDDIE MAC/CHAIRPERSON 12/6/07 $2,300 Wager, Richard C (R) SYRON, RICHARD F MCLEAN,VA 22102 FEDERAL HOME LOAN MORTGAGE CORPORAT 5/16/07 $5,000 Freddie Mac SYRON, RICHARD F WASHINGTON,DC 20008 FREDDIE MAC/CHAIRMAN/CEO 5/15/08 $1,000 Bean, Melissa (D) SYRON, RICHARD F MR CHESTNUT HILL,MA 02467 FREDDIE MAC/CEO 3/27/07 $2,300 Dodd, Christopher J (D) SYRON, RICHARD F MR CHESTNUT HILL,MA 02467 FREDDIE MAC/CEO 1/18/07 $2,000 Dodd, Christopher J (D) SYRON, RICHARD F MR CHESTNUT HILL,MA 02467 FREDDIE MALL/C.E.O. 8/17/07 $1,000 Romney, Mitt (R) SYRON, RICHARD F MR CHESTNUT HILL,MA 02467 FREDDIE MAC/CEO 3/27/07 $300 Dodd, Christopher J (D) SYRON, RICHARD F MR CHESTNUT HILL,MA 02467 8/21/08 $-2,300 Dodd, Christopher J (D)
“Congress could have simply set aside 700 billion dollars in 1977, and said: “We want persons who can’t afford homes to get them anyway.”
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The basic premise is utter insanity. More correctly, racist utter insanity. Regardless of how it went down afterwards.
McCian won’t touch this, largely because Republicans accept liberalism, starting with PResident Geroge W Bush, who pushed this insanity for 2 years.
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