ACORN and the mortgage meltdown

[Alison Swain]

So what? What conclusion do you draw from that?

I draw the conclusion that he supports and condones their activities. Especially since he provided them legal council and did "voter outreach" training for one of their "subsidiary" organizations.

 

[Marcia Langley]

Marcia, it is easy to blame one party, but to be honest there is plenty of blame to go around. Principally, I blame Washington for encouraging sub-prime lending. Banks had standards that were working for the most part, before the government intervened.

Doug,

We agree so far. I don't hold either party blameless. They all have the same cronies.

I do blame Wall Street and the public servants of both parties that abetted them.

That is a non-partsan position.

Where you and I might differ is this:

I believe Wall Street (not to exclude the rest of the financial industry especially lenders, GSEs, etc etc ...) and government conspired to deregulate and look the other way for the benifit of high finance.

I believe every time a specific risky action was wanted it was sold to the voters as either:

1. disguised as a boon to poor people
2. done behind closed doors
3. touted as a benifit to the economy in the form of trickle down wealth

I do not for one second believe that the risky mortgages were forced onto banks by groups like Acorn or other bleeding hearts. They were just pawns in the overall Wall Street strategy.

==========

That is not a Republican or a Democrat position. Republicans and Democrats alike are guilty.

That is in contrast to those who believe that by pinning the mortgage mess on powerless poor people that they somehow make it a Democrat-caused problem. That is the element of partisanship in this discussion.

Anyone who thinks Wall Street is only mixed up with Republicans is not paying attention.

 

[Greg Bell]

This is the cause...promoted by Acorn with Obama as a trainer...updated in 1995 to really push the standards down...now who was president during those times???Oh no not the Socialists (Democats).................................The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), enacted by Congress in 1977 (12 U.S.C. 2901) and implemented by Regulations 12 CFR parts 25, 228, 345, and 563e, is intended to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate. In this section of the web site, you can find out more about the regulation and its interpretation and information on CRA examinations.

 

[Offshore]

Much of the reason for the reaction to ACORN's sleazy mess is because it is leveraged fraud to the max. When there is no skin in the game, there is nothing to lose. Imagine being able to place a bet on the roulette wheel and the rules are you can keep the winnings, but if you lose, simply walk away and bill the taxpayer. At least with “conventional” fraud, the mortgagor loses their down payment when there is a foreclosure.

 

[SANDY]

The cra act did not require banks to give everyone a loan that could not afford to pay it. It did not require banks to develop no money down loans, interest only payments and arm repayment loans. It did not take these greedy lenders long to realize the tremendous amount of money they could make in fees etc in making these risky loans. In fact if you read some articles about the cra, they say that approximately 80% of the bad loans were made by lending institutions that were exempt from the cra requirements and that the majority of the loans made by lenders under the cra requirements are actually performing reasonably well. Also alowing these institutions to go from a 12-1 leverage ratio to 20 or 30-1 had much to do with the cause of the problem. I say greedy lenders that pushed these risky loans to a huge new sector of the market previousely untapped because they realized the huge fees that could be charged and tacked onto the loan payments is the real source of the problem we now have. Simple greed by lenders who basically said--ok you left wing liberals, you want us to improve lower income folks access to the mortgage market we will do it without any regard to the number of them we do or whether they are backed by margin of safety. We will give them to anybody and everybody and as part of that we will make a bucketfull of money from them and dump them on the GSE's and unsuspecting investors. We have our money from the fees upfront and we don't give a rat's *** about the consequences of our greed.

 

[Pamela Crowley (Florida)]

IMO, ACORN is all about removing personal responsibility for anything. Affirmative action at it's worse.

 

[Couch Potato]

IMO, ACORN is all about removing personal responsibility for anything. Affirmative action at it's worse.

a•corn |ˈāˌkôrn|
noun
a smooth oval nut in a rough cuplike base.

Such an appropriate name. :new_all_coholic:

 

[SANDY]

IMO, ACORN is all about removing personal responsibility for anything. Affirmative action at it's worse.

It's peanuts compared to the yachts, private planes, 300 million dollar bonuses and multi-million dollar Manhattan apartments that the ceo's have!!!

It's merely an example of some folks at the bottom and middle incomes looking around at the excess and greed of those at the top and finally saying let's get our piece! At least Reagan was smart enough to let some of the excess "trickle" down to keep the pagans happy--the problem recently is that they got so greedy that they didn't even want to let any of it trickle down at all. The million dollar yacht was not good enough, they wanted a 5 million dollar yacht.

There outta be a revolution!

 

[SANDY]

You gotta throw the monkeys in the cage a few peanuts once in awhile because if ya don't they are going to start throwin their own poo poo back at ya.

 

[PropertyEconomics]

It's peanuts compared to the yachts, private planes, 300 million dollar bonuses and multi-million dollar Manhattan apartments that the ceo's have!!!

It's merely an example of some folks at the bottom and middle incomes looking around at the excess and greed of those at the top and finally saying let's get our piece! At least Reagan was smart enough to let some of the excess "trickle" down to keep the pagans happy--the problem recently is that they got so greedy that they didn't even want to let any of it trickle down at all. The million dollar yacht was not good enough, they wanted a 5 million dollar yacht.

There outta be a revolution!

Its an example of people looking around and saying .. Hell if we cant earn it .. lets cheat to get it ... yeah there is a revolution going on ... and they cheat to get what they want.