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Scapegoating and the Financial Crisis
i saw the referenced video a couple of weeks ago and it
is a true piece of race-baiting, partisan hackery that was designed to
generate votes for mccain. at that time, i noticed it only had roughly
60,000 views, so i wasn't too concerned. it now has an accumulated 1.7
million views and counting thanks to drudge. so we've got a lot of
catching up to do-- while not as powerful as video, this piece gets the
basic record straight.
The gist:
The basic argument [is] that
the Community Reinvestment Act forced banks to loan to all people and, therefore, precipitated
the sub-prime crisis and irresponsible people getting loans they
couldn’t afford.
The Drudge Report happily hyped this video and injected it into the
conservative blogosphere. From there, the CRA meme caught like
wildfire. Soon, we were seeing it in top conservative blogs and even on the op-ed pages of major newspapers.
It is now an article of faith among many conservatives that the housing
crisis is rooted in the CRA - and, in turn, the millions of people of
color who were able to obtain mortgages through it.
This argument is not only morally repugnant, but simply factually off-base.
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