Required reading

[unixronin]

Still think Obama is a moderate?  Want to see what kind of change he might bring?  Read all about it here.  Among other things, it turns out the Great New Hope Of The Left was personally instrumental in priming the banking crisis we're facing right now, representing ACORN in the lobbying drive that forced the strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act and started the whole subprime-mortgage ball rolling.

(Pointer from the esteemed radarrider)

Comments

[skellington.livejournal.com]

Which point is that?

But it's also a not-insignificant factor that ACORN used lawsuits based on the CRA to force banks to issue subprime loans that they otherwise would not have issued because they were bad risks.

This? I have seen no evidence that CRA loans in general, or sub-prime CRA loans in specific, were given better terms than other sub-prime loans. And I've seen no evidence that CRA sub-prime loans default at any higher rates than sub-prime loans for other populations.

If you can find default data on CRA loans that shows is significantly higher than comparable sub-prime loans, especially during the 1998-2003 time period, I'd love to see it because everything I've seen says it is comparable or better given loan quality.

One can argue (soundly, I think) that this set the stage for the later bundling of the bad loans.

And this is another point where your logic chain breaks down. Banks were issuing sub-prime mortgages before the CRA, and were securitizing sub-prime mortgages before the special CRA mortgage backed securities were created in 1997. Details listed in my response.

Is there another point I'm missing?