The latest twist to the battle of the bailout changes the sign at the intersection of Wall and Main so that it now reads “white” and “colored” – and that definitely means the discussion is going in the wrong direction.
Wall Street Journal Fan and Fred’s patrons on Capitol Hill didn’t care about the risks inherent in their combined trillion-dollar-plus mortgage portfolios, so long as they helped meet political goals on housing…[The Community Reinvestment Act] compels banks to make loans to poor borrowers who often cannot repay them. Banks that failed to make enough of these loans were often held hostage by activists when they next sought some regulatory approval.
You can follow this line of thinking in any number of publications and blogs – Investor’s Business Daily;Washington Times; and National Review Online among others including a few like this one that makes the point.
You might ask how does all this ties up? Well, some economic pundits are saying since ACORN works with communities and Presidential nominee Barack Obama was once…
No doubt, you get the drift. However, the issue at hand is not Obama’s early career a community organizer but the ACORN voter-registration initiatives and federal funds the organization receives via state and local authorities from the Affordable Housing Trust.
My focus, instead, is better described as if you can’t see the trees for the acorns, you’ll never be able to see the forest – which, in this case, is the need for a comprehensive solution to the problems on Wall Street, including those that trickle down to citizens on Main Street, regardless of their color. Continue reading “Have we no shame? Race becomes issue in bailout”