Back From the Dead

Monday 23 August 2010 - Filed under Dumbassery + Economy + Government

The New York Times on Cuomo, Clinton’s Housing Secretary (because the founders definitely put a proviso in to the Constitution that the federal government oversee fucking housing):

And, in an effort to reverse decades of discrimination against blacks and Latinos, Mr. Cuomo pushed the government-sponsored banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to buy more home loans taken out by poor and working-class borrowers.

But when presented with chances to throttle back on the exploding subprime market, guard against predatory lending and reel in mortgage brokers and lenders, Mr. Cuomo several times faltered and backed down, interviews and records show.

He did not heed local officials and others who wanted him to make Fannie and Freddie publicly report details about the loans they bought.

And he chose not to impose penalties and other deterrents to ensure that the giant public banks did not promote dangerous lending.

2 things:

1. Why is it discrimination to not supply a loan for those without a means to pay? I don’t want to say that we don’t have a history full of horrible discrimination, or that many minorities who could afford repayment weren’t discriminated against, but not loaning money to poor people because they can’t repay isn’t one such example regardless of whether many or even most of them were minorities.

2. I especially like how they still frame subprime lending as “predatory” when they were necessitated due to federal housing policy, and F&F’s promotion of the “homeownership at all cost” mantra of the late 90s and early naughties. I can guarantee that that if government didn’t mandate giving out loans to those who couldn’t afford to repay them in the name of universal home ownership, banks would not have been rushing to lose money.

2010-08-23  »  madlibertarianguy