This really erked me this weekend...

[HoustonRaven]

I'm certainly not claiming that the "bubble" or the crisis is a result of race at all. I'm simply stating that the government are the ones who initially interjected a theme of discriminatory racism way back when. Because they were trying to champion potential racism within the housing/mortgage market when all they did was basically themselves admit that minorities couldn't afford the same houses that white people had and that wasn't fair.

Now, I'm not so naive to think that there were not banks and lenders who WERE being racist and discriminatory towards giving minorities a big mortgage loan, but not all of them.

If you can't afford a mortgage then you shouldn't even be trying to take it out and if a bank determines that your financial status is not suitable to have the responsibility of a mortgage, then as a lender that should be their right.

Well said.

[Galen Sevinne]

I'm certainly not claiming that the "bubble" or the crisis is a result of race at all. I'm simply stating that the government are the ones who initially interjected a theme of discriminatory racism way back when. Because they were trying to champion potential racism within the housing/mortgage market when all they did was basically themselves admit that minorities couldn't afford the same houses that white people had and that wasn't fair.

Firstly, I appreciate your attempts to try to understand this but I think you are still looking at it a bit incorrectly. The government never admitted, stated or in my opinion ever believed that minorities couldn't afford housing that whites could. What the government did with CRA in 1977 was to prevent the opinion of the lenders from thinking minorities couldn't afford housing like whites could. The government stepped into a situation where there was clear racial discrimination occurring in private enterprise (mortgage lenders) and regulate mortgage lenders from saying, "you can't tell people who live, for example, on "Minority Avenue" that they can't be approved for a mortgage only because they live on "Minority Avenue" when they clearly meet the same financial criteria that the guy who lives on "Whitey Blvd." meets." The process of "Redlining" would actually have a mortgage lender draw a red line around "Minority Avenue" and deny a loan specifically because you were in a red line. A white millionaire could have lived on "Minority Avenue" and not been able to buy a home. The red lines were drawn around areas that were predominately minority. This is clearly discrimination. CRA stopped the practice of red lining and opened up these areas for mortgage lending based on the same equations that the CEO on "Whitey Ave." had to meet.

Conservatives on this board and in general politics see that suddenly minorites were able to get loans and it is an easy leap for them to think this must have caused the crash although there was no crash until over 25 years later. I am not sure how they make their argument as they haven't clearly stated it other than accusing me of "race baiting" which is similar to their calling out the media whenever they dont hear what they want to hear. It is abundantly clear to me and others who see this 25 year gap between CRA and the housing crash that it wasn't because minorities suddenly bought houses nor that the government opened up lending to minorities.

Ending "Redlining" is really no different than the government stepping in and preventing businesses from prohibiting blacks from eating at the lunch counter, riding busses attending schools etc. There are some, like Rand Paul, who will argue against this sort government intervention. Of course, he has the privilege of being born into the majority as well as the son of a doctor so his argument resonates weekly for me. In the academic world of racial equality, this is referred to as "white privilege". It appears rather rampant here on this board. Of course their next move will be to diminish the academic world as they do the media and everything else that points out their rigid world views.

Now, I'm not so naive to think that there were not banks and lenders who WERE being racist and discriminatory towards giving minorities a big mortgage loan, but not all of them.

If you think "red lining" is discriminatory then you might want to rethink this as it was wide spread. I am not sure how wide spread as there must have been some companies that made loans. I don't know what percentage. Its a good question. Obviously it was wide spread enough to create legislation to end it.

If you can't afford a mortgage then you shouldn't even be trying to take it out and if a bank determines that your financial status is not suitable to have the responsibility of a mortgage, then as a lender that should be their right.

No argument from me here. In fact, I would like to see more government regulation around this idea. Buying a home is a huge deal and should onl be done when it is clear that you can afford it even when times are tough.

[NCRAVEN]

Couple points, Galen
1.) Find ANYWEHERE on this thread someone is talking about this as a racial issue other than you.
2.) The Crash came 25 years after the original “CRA” but only about 10 years after the Clinton admin rewrote the law force lenders to relax their lending criteria