Posted on 01/07/2010 12:02:05 PM PST by SkyPilot
Millions of Americans are outraged that bank officers get fat bonuses for making bad loans. But what is truly grotesque is how few people demand that these bankers go to jail for the crime of “reverse redlining.” “It is unthinkable that bank lending officers up and down the corporate chain of command might face criminal prosecution for ruining the lives of millions!”
Wells Fargo, the biggest home mortgage lender in American banking, just paid back the federal government $25 billion in bailout money. That means Wells Fargo considers itself relieved of further obligations to the taxpayers that rescued the bank from the consequences of its own business practices. But what of the people whose lives Wells Fargo ruined – a hugely disproportionate number of whom are Black?
While Wells Fargo’s executives are cueing up for their bonuses, the list of lawsuits grows, charging the bank with massive racial discrimination. The latest plaintiffs are the city of Memphis and surrounding Shelby County, Tennessee, where Wells Fargo’s practice of “reverse redlining” has decimated African American neighborhoods while sparing whites of similar economic status. In some Black neighborhoods, one out of every eight Wells Fargo loans have gone into foreclosure. The proportion is only one out of 59 in similarly situated white neighborhoods because, according to the suit, Wells Fargo acted responsibly when making loans to whites.
The same pattern of racism in lending caused the city of Baltimore to sue Wells Fargo, earlier last year. Both Memphis and Baltimore argue that Wells Fargo’s disastrous Black lending practices destroyed substantial portions of the cities’ tax base by forcing so many residents out of their homes. The state of Illinois sued Wells Fargo last summer, for charging Blacks and Latinos more for mortgages than whites of similar income. It’s the same story in Los Angeles, where thousands of Black households have been joined in a class action suit against Wells Fargo. The NAACP has launched suits against Wells Fargo and a long list of its colleagues in mortgage lending crimes.
“Not one Wells Fargo executive will spend a day in jail for participating in a racist assault against millions of Black and brown people.”
But what is the nature of the crime, and what should be the punishment? It is in the presence of massive economic outrages, coldly and systematically executed, against historically oppressed victims who are made more vulnerable in the process of the assault, that “bourgeois justice,” as some of us used to call it, is revealed as a rich man’s con game. There is no limit to what can be taken from the poor, including their lives, especially if they are Black, but the rich commit their crimes behind corporate shields, with relative impunity. Commit a crime against a bank and you face federal criminal prosecution, yet it is unthinkable that bank lending officers up and down the corporate chain of command might face criminal prosecution for ruining the lives of millions! One can earn extra years in jail for physically assaulting a person as part of a racial hate crime, but not one Wells Fargo executive will spend a day in jail for participating in a racist assault against millions of Black and brown people who were simply seeking home mortgages.
Elemental justice cannot exist under capitalism; it is incompatible with the prerogatives of money. That's why few people in our political culture even consider that several thousand bankers should be imprisoned for at least as long as bank robbers for their premeditated crimes against millions of families. But, corporate criminals like Wells Fargo don't need a Get Out of Jail Free card. Nobody even thinks about putting them in jail, in the first place.
Read this site's homepage to see more of this lunancy.
The scary thing is this - Black Agenda Report is a site that is one of the leading black advocacy pages on the web - both for the left and for those involved with racist "Idenity Politics" that are a foundation of the Democrat Party.
To them, the fact that 59% of their mortgages have "failed" is not because they haven't made the bloody payments. Oh no.
It is "RACISM!"
A leading cause of our current near economic Depression was the fact that banks were pressured by the government to give away money to minorities in "red lined" districts who had little intention of paying it back.
They won't be satisfied until everyone lives in the same misery, and we live under a regime similar to North Korea's. That used to be an exaggeration. Now it is a fact.
“While Wells Fargo’s executives are cueing up for their bonuses” Do you think they got bonuses for playing billiards?
Bawney Fwank...Chris Dodd et al need to go to jail for putting forth the ACORN agenda of Mortgages for indigents.....
which is why the country (via the bank collapses) is in the economic shape that it is in.
I partially blame Bush who new about what the Dhimmicrats were doing...complained about it...but never pushed the issue.
What of the 10 foot tall Blue people ?
Wells Fargo did not want any bailout money.
Our government FORCED Wells Fargo to take bailout money!
Also, ACORN and the Left FORCED banks to make these bad loans!
You’r racist if you don’t make loans to minorities and your racist if you do...
Yet minorities have absolutely no responsibility for taking out loans they couldn’t afford in the first place...
I guess there’s no chance of ever “resolving” the “race issue”. There is absolutely no way that the grievance mongers will ever be satisfied.
So, time for a shift in policy.
NO PREFERENCES. NO RACE BASED LAWS. EVERYONE PLAYS BY THE SAME RULES.
Shape up or GTHO.
That's why I'm finding it harder and harder to believe this country will ever pull out of the tailspin it's in. When millions of people read this type of article, nod their head, continue to think this way, AND VOTE -- what are the long term prospects for this country?
Bankers don’t owe blacks or anyone else anything!
Don’t pay your mortgage, go live on the street!
The world owes black people NOTHING.
The article said: In some Black neighborhoods, one out of every eight Wells Fargo loans have gone into foreclosure.
That would actually be 12.5%, not 59% as I said (they were talking about 1 in 59 houses as a comparison).
However, it must be pointed out that the rate of black foreclosure in many communities is actually much, much higher than 12.% than this "article" of wack jobs will admit.
They’re upset because they got loans they shouldn’t have gotten to buy houses they shouldn’t have bought.
My solution to the credit problem: kick the Federal government out of it, and go back to sound banking practices. Loan money to people who can pay it back. If you can’t buy a house, rent like my two uncles did.
Come on, this has got to be satire. There is no way anyone really believes this.
This is nothing more than the same racist Black Ku Klux Klanning of mainstream America.
Always someone elses fault...never their own. I am getting sick of this
DING! DING! DING! We have a winner!!! So why aren't we prosecuting the likes of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, not to mention all the other government officials who didn't want to get rid of CRA? Same old crap, find a victim and then make someone (in the private sector) the villain.
Simple answer: nothing.
Mortgage owners own the bankers their agreed sum, though.
Unbelievable. Mortgage lenders were FORCED by CRA laws and FNMA/FHLMC policies to make bad loan in minority neighborhoods.
Now that TSHTF, they are crying Racsim due to the high foreclosure rates?
I swear. Sometimes I think this is all propaganda devised by white KKK racists to further destory black/whire relations.
And then I remember that these are Democratic policies, and so I’m justified in thinking so.
I am with you on that. And for so many years, I thought things were going along well enough, then Barack 0bama showed up in the national spotlight, and suddenly I feel smacked in the face with these realities of racism about which I was so ignorant. I did not comprehend the depth of contempt (still) felt by blacks toward whites.
Envy. Greed. Covetousness. Deceit.
They are all sins.
The Bible tells us, over and over again, that human sinners will go to each length, great and small, to deny their sin before God.
As I read your comment again (and it is a great comment), ask that same question about a man who commits disgusting sodomy on another man, or someone who is caught stealing.
Have you ever watched COPS or another show where a criminal is finally confronted with their crimes, and they cannot admit to anyone, or themselves - that they are actually doing these things?
Some black people have allowed this "racism" excuse to permeate every fiber of their being. It is a demonic and satanic practice, because it encourages people to deny reality, self-examination, and their relationship with God.
Unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled. They profess that they know God, but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate." (Titus 1:15,16)
Anyone else see the KFC advertisement banner at the top of their webpage. Just sayin.....
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