President Obama adopted a fighting stance against the financial services industry today in his weekly radio address. He promised that his proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) would protect Americans by banning unfair practices and enforcing strong new consumer protections. I want to believe. But having studied the details of the president’s plan for financial [...]
Read moreAnother voice against the attack on the Community Reinvestment Act
On October 3 Bill Moyers interviewed Emma Coleman Jordan about the mortgage meltdown and the latest cries that the Community Reinvestment Act is to blame. Coleman adds her voice to those of us who reject this nonsense. Coleman teaches commercial law and economic justice at Georgetown University. She’s a former White House Fellow and assistant [...]
Read moreThe big lie about the role of affordable lending goals in the collapse of Fannie Mae
The Big Lie: Fannie Mae collapsed because of Congressional affordable housing goals and this, in turn, was the cause of the Wall Street collapse that resulted in the $700 billion federal bailout. The Big Lie has been spreading very rapidly through several sources: an oversimplification of the story by the mainstream media (see, for example, [...]
Read moreShifting the blame from subprime lenders and Wall Street to the victims
It’s to be expected. Anti-government pundits and apologists for predatory lenders are spinning hard, trying to shift the blame for the mortgage crisis from bad lending policies brought about by Wall Street in cahoots with predatory lenders and onto the modest attempts by the government to deal with discriminatory home loan practices. This argument was [...]
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June 20, 2009
