August 5, 2011

Let's play "Spot the Fallacies"

An op-ed in the New York Times by Princeton sociologist Douglas S. Massey, "Isolated, Vulnerable, and Broke:"
ACCORDING to a new study by the Pew Research Center, Hispanic families saw the largest decline in wealth of any racial or ethnic group in the country during the latter half of the last decade: from 2005 to 2009, their median wealth fell by an astounding 66 percent. The reason? The implosion of the housing market, where Hispanic families had invested much of their wealth. 
But that’s only the latest chapter in a much longer story. Over the past two decades Hispanics have moved from the middle of the socioeconomic hierarchy, between blacks and whites, to a position below both. On virtually every indicator of socioeconomic welfare, Hispanics fell relative to blacks. 

Not really. I've looked at least as many socioeconomic indicators as Professor Massey over the last 39 years, and the keynote is relative stability. But, to the extent that Hispanics fell relative to blacks on socioeconomic indicators, it's largely due to a flood of new immigrants from south of the border.
This has nothing to do with nativist tropes like work ethic or resistance to assimilation and everything to do with misguided government policy: our immigration and border-control system has created a class of people cut off from traditional legal and economic structures and thus vulnerable to the worst depredations of the market system.

When somebody angrily announces without evidence "This has nothing to do with nativist tropes like work ethic or resistance to assimilation ..." they are feeling insecure about their argument.
During the housing bubble, those depredations came in the form of predatory lenders, driven by the boom in mortgage-backed securities. Before that, minorities had generally been shunned by lenders, which tended to be risk averse and discriminatory.

And, apparently, accurate.
... Yet subprime lending affected both blacks and Hispanics and, if anything, predatory lenders went after the former more than the latter. So why did Hispanics suffer more? 

I doubt that predatory lenders went after blacks more than Hispanics. The big money didn't flow into Detroit. All that happened there was you had a lot of $30,000 houses got pumped up to $65,000 before collapsing to $12,000. That's nothing compared to the flood of money into, say, California's Inland Empire.

You can see that Massey doesn't know what he's talking about just by looking at the four Sand States (CA, AZ, NV, FL) where the great majority of money was lost. At the peak of the bubble, something like 3/8ths of all the market value of homes in the U.S. was in California alone.

Lots of lenders had been burned on black neighborhoods before. Latinos were the big growth market. If you listed to the key figures in the housing bubble, such as Angelo Mozilo, Henry Cisneros, and George W. Bush, it's clear that they were much more excited over the potential of the Hispanic market than of the black market.
The answer is simple: over time more and more Hispanics had become economically vulnerable and eminently exploitable, a fact attributable in large part to American immigration policy. 
In the early 1990s the United States began militarizing its border with Mexico in an effort to halt unauthorized migration.

Lame. The argument here is that if illegal immigrants were legal, then magic ponies for everybody. Or something. There seems to be lacking a mechanism.
... Thus the sudden creation of a new class of people, working low-wage jobs outside the legal labor markets. Not only was it difficult for them to safely accumulate wealth, but they were left uniquely vulnerable to economic exploitation — such as the promise of a mortgage with little documentation required at signing.
When the Great Recession arrived, many Hispanics got hit with a double whammy: not only were many Hispanic homeowners left with negative equity, but the collapse of construction jobs, which had been a primary draw for immigrants beforehand, eliminated the very means by which they could continue making mortgage payments. 

Indeed.
And because many were working and living in legal gray areas, they had little recourse when they learned their mortgages came with ballooning fee structures and onerous penalties for late payments. What little wealth they had managed to accumulate simply vanished.

As opposed to everybody else who had tons of recourse.

This is just dumb. On the whole, illegal immigrants had more options, including just disappearing.

The simple explanation is that a big influx of Hispanics helped justify the housing bubble. Who was going to buy these houses in Palmdale for $400,000? Why the infinite supply of hard-working family values Hispanics, that's who. Just like the President said. Only evil nativists had any doubts about their ability to pay. The smart money boys like Mozilo and Cisneros are putting a trillion dollars into underserved markets. You notice Mozilo didn't team up with Al Sharpton.

Now, I read several hundred articles about people who got foreclosed upon. I'm pretty good at noticing patterns in large amounts of anecdotal evidence. And I was looking for evidence of a huge role for illegal immigrants in this debacle. Trust me, I was.

While I saw plenty of Spanish surnames, my impression is that the big money foreclosures in the Inland Empire, Vegas, and Phoenix hit hardest Hispanics who were either born here or had been here a fair amount of time. New illegal immigration played a huge role, but it was more indirect. You see much higher foreclosure rates in entrepots in LA and Orange Co. like East LA and Santa Ana relative to surrounding neighborhoods, but the really big money was lost in fast growing inland areas that were less entrepots for illegal immigrants than Brown Flight destinations. Illegal Immigration pushed established Hispanics out of LA County and into the desert, looking to get away from the newcomers. Only in the last year or two as the bottom of the barrel got scraped ever harder did a large number of illegals got loans.


57 comments:

rightsaidfred said...

Princeton sociologist

Depressing in itself: a supposedly well educated, engaged person just gives us stereotypes and tropes.

Anonymous said...

Of course, in a free market, lenders being rational economic agents seeking to maximize their capital at minimal risk to themselves, would have fallen over themselves to lend to hispanics *if* they were a good risk.
This is capitalism 101 and needs no further explanation.
The fact that hispanics 'were cut off from traditional lines of credit' speaks for itself.

Anonymous said...

When 'nobody' lent to them, the writer whines.
When 'someone' (ie the whole rotten subprime state/capitalist disaster that brought down half the world and Greece too), did lend to them, the writer still whines.

What in the name of G*d does want?, what is he trying to prove?
Five year olds are more reasonable and intelligent.

Londoner said...

So refusing to lend money to them is racist, and lending money to them is predatory. Right! Heads they win, tails you lose!

Also: "unauthorized migration" is a nice one that I haven't heard before. "undocumented" must be getting a bit old hat now. Essentially, the use of ANY euphemism for "illegal immigration" immediately tells you everything you need to know about what you're reading and the person who wrote it. A most useful shibboleth.

Kaz said...

Are you really sure the foreclosures relating to illegal immigrant 'owned' homes?

Was it THAT easy to get loans back then?

If that's true then what the #%$!@$ were banks doing.

Anonymous said...

So apparently it wasn't the non-existent 'immigration control' south of the border that's responsible for the hispnanic plight (otherwise they wouldn't be in the USA in the first place), or the existence of an immigration free-for-all (which apparently Massey wants,even the USA wasn't that stupid), no it was neither.You see hispanics were cut-off like zombies in some sort of limbo 'in this world and not in this world' at the same time - or at least I think that is what Massey is trying to tell me.

beowulf said...

"On the whole, illegal immigrants had more options, including just disappearing."
Right, fake IDs and stolen SS numbers serve a lot of purposes, none of them good.

Was it THAT easy to get loans back then?
If that's true then what the #%$!@$ were banks doing.

Cashing in. Banks stopped "eating their own cooking" by holding the note. Why bother doing risk assessment if you're going to flip the mortgages to dumb investors from all over the globe?

The root of the problem is that median wages have been stagnant for decades. Instead of taking action on the causes of this (illegal immigration, trade deficit, a minimum wage 30% below its inflation-adjusted value in 1968), the banks bought off Democrats and Republicans alike with a policy of "let them eat credit".
http://www.tnr.com/article/economy/77242/inequality-recession-credit-crunch-let-them-eat-credit

Anonymous said...

Progressives cannot decide if conservatives are motivated more by greed or by racism.

Gilbert Ratchet said...

I love this:

During the housing bubble, those depredations came in the form of predatory lenders, driven by the boom in mortgage-backed securities. Before that, minorities had generally been shunned by lenders, which tended to be risk averse and discriminatory.

IN other words, either they don't get served at all, or they get served by sharks out to get them. This really is "World Ends; Women, Minorities Hardest Hit."

Anonymous said...

A suitable program would be to lend money to minorities but not force them to make payments.

Chicago said...

He doesn't know what he's talking about yet this is the story that gets the mass circulation. These "experts" are all for hire and will argue any side of an issue depending on who is paying them.
Going through the Mexican neighborhoods in this city it looks to me that they are actually doing fairly well. There is a lot of home ownership of nice homes fully occupied by families who all have people working. Who actually owns these homes is disguised by the fact that many have the paperwork in the name of someone else. A large proportion work for cash in home and car repair, restaurants, you name it.
They milk the taxpayer: Food Stamps, welfare, school lunches, preferential government jobs for the legals. In addition lots of cash washes through their area from the drug courier trade and stolen car industry. Reputably, lots of low profile, legitimate appearing Mexicans rent out their garages as transshipment storage points for drugs. Cars that disappear surface as parts in many of their shops. Money gained this way pays for the shop or restaurant that many open. This gives the impression that they are success stories, hard working entrepreneurs.
There is a seamless blend of legal and illegal in their areas, whether of residency or income. American law means nothing to them anyway. No, they're not doing badly at all compared to other groups, considering their educational background.

Anonymous said...

"from 2005 to 2009, their median wealth fell by an astounding 66 percent. The reason? The implosion of the housing market, where Hispanic families had invested much of their wealth. "

Bah, hah, hah. What wealth?! Almost all Hispanic wealth by 2005 was derived from fake home equity. The Housing Bubble gods giveth, and the housing bubble gods taketh away.

Only a new bubble in the price of 60's era muscle cars painted lime green or electric orange will restore Hispanic wealth.

Anonymous said...

These Countrywide loans are about to sink Bank of America.

Anonymous said...

OT

Well, if you were thinking about going to the WI State Fair....DON'T

Scare at State Fair: witnesses describe mobs, some people claim racially-charged attacks

"It was 100% racial," claimed Eric, an Iraq war veteran from St. Francis who says young people beat on his car.

"I had a black couple on my right side, and these black kids were running in between all the cars, and they were pounding on my doors and trying to open up doors on my car, and they didn't do one thing to this black couple that was in this car next to us. They just kept walking right past their car. They were looking in everybody's windshield as they were running by, seeing who was white and who was black. Guarantee it."

DCThrowback said...

It's a damn shame that this fine Princeton gentlemen, with his sinecure intact, gets an op-ed published in the NYT. In probably 30 minutes of thinking and writing, you turned the entire piece on its head, making him look like an amateur. This fisking is impressive, thorough and, for you, like shooting fish in the barrel. This happens when you become one of the premier subject matter experts in an area of thought.

The first two anons are spot on. Government messing w/ the markets, liberal hypocrisy (loan them $$! Wait! They were taken advantage of!) and flat out greed were the root causes of this debacle.

Anonymous said...

"And because many were working and living in legal gray areas, they had little recourse ..."

Oh, they did have one slight advantage over the rest of us. They could walk away from the mortgages they should never have had with no consequences.

Anonymous said...

Kaz said, "Are you really sure the foreclosures relating to illegal immigrant 'owned' homes?

Was it THAT easy to get loans back then?

If that's true then what the #%$!@$ were banks doing."


Kaz, just read this gem from 2007 from the SF Chronicle. Though they don't come out and state it, it is not too hard to read between the lines to know these folks are probably illegal. Here are some excerpts:

When Alberto and Rosa Ramirez began looking for a home, they never imagined that 18 months later they would personify a national real estate crisis. It's not that they bought a house with walls crawling with toxic mold or inherited an insane neighbor next door or, even, God forbid, that they didn't buy at all. They bought, and they love, their slice of the American Dream.

"It's all very nice and beautiful," Rosa tells me through a translator. "The neighborhood is very peaceful. The problem is not with the house at all. It's the price of the house."


...

It all began when they were talking to another family about escaping their subsidized apartments and getting a real house. The other couple -- Jesus Martinez and his wife, who also have three children -- work as mushroom farmers, earning about $500 a week each when there is work. The two couples decided to pool their resources and begin house-hunting. Given their total income, they estimated that they could afford payments of $3,000 a month. They spotted an ad in the local magazine La Ganga for Maria Avila of Rancho Grande Real Estate and called her.

...

How did a strawberry picker earning $15,000 a year qualify for a loan of $720,000? The answer, say the experts, lies in a lending industry that got too innovative for its own good.

JSM said...

"but they were left uniquely vulnerable to economic exploitation — such as the promise of a mortgage with little documentation required at signing."

Oh, poor babies.

Let's see. Get a "no-doc," "stated income," or "NINJA" (no income, no job, no assets) loan where you do not have to provide any proof of income, just sign your name claiming that what you say you make is the truth; with NO DOWN PAYMENT; on a 120% loan-to-value loan with cash back to the "buyer" at closing; get to live in that house without making ANY PAYMENTS for six months until the foreclosure is completed; and then move out.

Yeah, some economic exploitation of the poor, poor, picked on, Hispanic gardener making $14 hour.
Geez, I'd love to be "exploited" like that.

Meanwhile, as a White American-American couple, we had to show paystubs that we made the money that would support our mortgage, we got a VA loan with 2.5% points that WE HAD TO PAY at closing, no "cash back," and we've made our payments as agreed, because we bought a house we could afford. Oh, and I get the fun of bailing out, with my taxes, the banksters that made a fat fortune originating those shitty loans after they, predictably, go bad.

JSM said...

"If that's true then what the #%$!@$ were banks doing."

Kaz, my sister was a mortgage broker during the So Cal bubble. She didn't make any no-doc "liar's loans" (as she called them) due to ethics. But she saw what was done.

Bank of America was grinning its fat face off during the whole bubble era. You see, they made those "stated income" loans and took a fat origination fee for doing so. Then they sold a huge number of those loans to Wall Street "financial engineers" who "sliced and diced" them into different tranches with differing "risk profiles" (and therefore different rates of return). Wall Street then resold them to criminally stupid pension fund managers who thought they'd get 20%per year with no risk. Because "everybody knows" mortgages are always "a safe investment."

Bank of America didn't care. They'd gotten a chunk of change up front and offloaded their risk.
Had BofA been forced to service ALL the loans we made, they'd have been a mite slower with their money-handing-out, CRA notwithstanding.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

Huh. So I guess immigrants aren't going to be paying a bunch of taxes to bale out our entitlement programs after all.

Classic:

Douglas S. Massey is a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton and the author of “Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System.”

Does it ever occur to him that immigrants are voting with their feet for the Categorically Unequal American Stratification System?

Anonymous said...

Those predatory lenders have a lot to answer for.

We should take away their guns and knives and probably chop of their hands so they cannot force those poor economically vulnerable illegals to accept loans they can't afford.

Kylie said...

From the linked article: "...their[Hispanics's] median wealth fell by an astounding 66 percent. The reason? The implosion of the housing market, where Hispanic families had invested much of their wealth."

What wealth? What investment? My understanding of those risky loans was that the wannabe home buyers didn't have to invest much, if anything, of their wealth to move into one of those homes.

In other words, Hispanics's median wealth was artificially inflated by their being able to sign for and move into houses they couldn't afford. So when the housing bubble burst, they were right back where they started (maybe worse, if they used credit to furnish the houses they'd moved into).

"Not only was it difficult for them[Hispanic illegal aliens] to safely accumulate wealth,"

Cry me a rio. It's not supposed to be easy for trespassers to benefit from trespassing b/c the whole point is that they shouldn't be there in the first place.

"...but they were left uniquely vulnerable to economic exploitation— such as the promise of a mortgage with little documentation required at signing."

Yes, that's the downside of being an illegal. So unfair, there shouldn't be any downside.

Basically, this clown is saying that the illegal part of being an illegal alien didn't work out so well for them.

And as Steve points out, he's kicking up all sorts of fallacious dust to make his point.

Anonymous said...

"if anything, predatory lenders went after the former more than the latter"--he is just writing whatever the hell he feels like, evidence optional, "fiat reality" as the nutroots would say. *Of course* the diabolical top-hatted lenders would prioritize finding new Black Victims, don't'cha know. Flipping through his c.v. ("American Apartheid," "The New L Word," "Return to Aztlan") I'm overwhelmed by the urge to forget I've heard of him now. And he identifies as a native of Olywa--IMO a nice town in some respects, in others, the perfect collision of white-collar goverdemia and aggressive ignorance.

Anonymous said...

It doesn't really matter how many times non-whites screw up, people will always "find" a way to blame whitey, no matter how laughably stupid it is.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, only in America can you borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars, not pay it back, and still be a victim.

Anonymous said...

Yes, it was that easy to get loans back then. There are some famous cases of strawberry pickers buying $700K homes.

http://piggington.com/strawberry_picker_buys_720_000_house_on_15_000_yr_income

Note that the borrowers don't speak english and work in the fields. Odds are very, very high that they're illegals, but of course no reporter is gauche enough to point this out, or even to ask about it.

corvinus said...

Also: "unauthorized migration" is a nice one that I haven't heard before. "undocumented" must be getting a bit old hat now.

"Unauthorized" is actually an improvement over "undocumented" because it has a shade of meaning closer to "illegal", as opposed to making it seem you just left your wallet somewhere.

Nanonymous said...

a supposedly well educated, engaged person just gives us stereotypes and tropes.

That supposedly well educated, engaged person is a parasite who has built a lucrative career out of telling lies.

Anonymous said...

Conflicts of interest should be noted by NYT. The academic edifice needs a steady supply of bodies to replenish the stock, now that more non-female natives are figuring it's probably a waste of time. See http://www.knowhow2go.org/es.php

Anonymous said...

If that's true then what the #%$!@$ were banks doing.

Trying to get the civil \w\r\o\n\g\s rights lawyers to stay off their back and let them buy other lenders, instead of being the one bought.

Anonymous said...

"Princeton sociologist

Depressing in itself: a supposedly well educated, engaged person just gives us stereotypes and tropes."

Isn't this really the problem...that those in universities are really nothing more than "welfare hos" themselves? They owe their jobs, particularly those in the soft sciences but even some in the hard sciences, to parroting a certain line and should they stop spouting those lines, they risk losing those welfare checks called paychecks.

It's really up to the other academics to call them out. Enough of them banding together would be effective, enough of them saying, "Let's look at the data collected over the last 50 years."

Seriously, they'd have to get a group of really articulate(yet likeable) people together and flood shows like Oprah and Ellen and give those hostesses some lessons in science.

Quite frankly, I think a goodly number of Americans know the truth--that the poor stay poor for reasons that have little or nothing to do with bias and prejudice. These same Americans need scientists to speak outloud.

We can't keep throwing money at problems that money can't solve. There should be no problem in saying that.

The poor are poor because they make horrible decisions...and they keep making them even after they've been given my tax dollars.

Just spoke yesterday to two single mothers(one 23, one 40). Both are Hispanic (I am visiting in a town north of Fresno in CA's Central Valley). Both are Hispanic, both born here. The youngest has a 5 year old daughter and is living with the jobless father of her child. She's a nice kid, but what little money she earns, she spends on upgrading her cell phones. She told me yesterday she wants a $500 one. She has had the cell she uses now for less than 4 months and is already tired of it.

The 40 year old has three kids by two fathers, two kids over 20. She cleans houses for a living, but she has for the last year been paying $40 every two weeks to get her nails done and they are so long she can barely do housework any longer. She said she would rather quit cleaning houses than lose those ugly nails.

The poor stay poor for a reason. Unfortunately, our tax dollars are paying to support these two, their boyfriends, their medical and dental and eye care, their housing and food costs, and their cell phone and nail care costs.

Oh, and the younger of the two just began taking her little one this week to a government financed Kindercare program, an enrichment program for kids of low income families who are entering kindergarten this fall. As I spoke to her about it, she mentioned that she was about to take the child to get a pedicure--she said her pedicurists agreed to do the child's for $10.00

Yeah, a great way to spend my money and I told her that. She laughed.

eh said...

As an opinion piece (note the URL), I think it was meant more as an appeal to emotion, i.e. rather than some kind of analysis. But, anyway, yes, you do expect a certain degree of logic in any case (even from a sociologist), and you found the fallacies nicely.

For example:

...where Hispanic families had invested much of their wealth.

A lot of the 'housing crisis' came about due to high LTV loans, i.e. the buyer put very little to nothing down. So many "Hispanic families" (another appeal to emotion) didn't 'invest' all that much. Their net wealth may have declined because their house is now worth less, but that doesn't mean they ever "invested" anything in it. I mean, a lot of them didn't pay all that much of the loan back. Obviously.

oldparalegal said...

I worked in a law firm that defended "predatory lending" cases before the housing bubble really took off, i.e. 1999-2001. The catchphrase "predatory lending" was initially used by plaintiff's lawyers to describe the situation where a homeowner in a relatively stable market like, e.g. San Jose, owned her house outright. Many of these people had not considered using their large equity positions to get cash for needless purchases or gifts to relatives. The terms were of course indecipherable and oppressive, especially for older uneducated blacks, and this was the basis for the claim of predation. So, not to gainsay your overall point about the journalism, but there's probably little reason to think that that initial class of predatory lending couldn't have hit Detroit.

Anonymous said...

Race riots in WI

http://tinyurl.com/3helzpj

Anonymous said...

Affordable Family Formation

Via Altright

airtommy said...

our immigration and border-control system has created a class of people cut off from traditional legal and economic structures

Is there a software program that creates these types of euphemisms? Let me try:

"We throw thieves in jail."

====> Run Program X-Gi89 ====>

"Our larceny-control system has created a class of people cut off from traditional legal and economic structures."

Susan Tufts Fiske said...

From his wiki entry

Massey was president of the Population Association of America... He served as the 92nd president of the American Sociological Association... and has won several awards for his books... president of the American Academy of Political and Social Science...

Massey's research areas include:
Demography
Urban Sociology
Race and Ethnicity
International Migration
Latin American Society,
particularly Mexico


Sounds like the Princeton Sociology equivalent of Steve Saler.

Such is the current state of our public intellectuals.

Susan Tufts Fiske

Anonymous said...

"Are you really sure the foreclosures relating to illegal immigrant 'owned' homes?

Was it THAT easy to get loans back then?

If that's true then what the #%$!@$ were banks doing."

I went to a seminar at the New America Foundation a few tears before the crash and a (Jewish) employee from a Federal mortgage regulatory agency made it perfectly clear that banks were not to enquire as to citizenship, and strongly implied that it would be racist to do so.

Robert Hume

Anonymous said...

fallic symbol of liberalism.

Anonymous said...

"Princeton sociologist"

"Depressing in itself: a supposedly well educated, engaged person just gives us stereotypes and tropes."

Remember Michelle graduated with honors for her 'sea of white folks' thesis.

Paul said...

Meanwhile, as a White American-American couple, we had to show paystubs that we made the money that would support our mortgage, we got a VA loan with 2.5% points that WE HAD TO PAY at closing, no "cash back," and we've made our payments as agreed, because we bought a house we could afford. Oh, and I get the fun of bailing out, with my taxes, the banksters that made a fat fortune originating those shitty loans after they, predictably, go bad.

Dat's Racisssssss!!!

Kylie said...

Susan Tufts Fiske said, "Massey's research areas include:
Demography
Urban Sociology
Race and Ethnicity
International Migration
Latin American Society,
particularly Mexico

Sounds like the Princeton Sociology equivalent of Steve Saler[sic].

Such is the current state of our public intellectuals."


Indeed.

Veracitor said...

Massey: "...our immigration and border-control system has created a class of people cut off from traditional legal and economic structures..."

Arrow of causation wrong.

This particular "class of people" was created by the voluntary movement and actions of the people in the class (the illegal immigrants). Each and every one of them fully understood that he or she would go to the USA without permission and without valid papers, to exploit the labor markets and welfare systems of the USA. The illegal immigrants actively desired to be "cut off from traditional legal and economic structures," especially those of their home countries (where many of the immigrants were dissatisfied with their prospects).

Massey makes a similar error a bit further on, when he writes that his pets were "exploited" by stuff like "the promise of a mortgage with little documentation required at signing." Really? In fact, they were very happy to get mortgages with "little documentation required." It was taxpayers forced to bail out insouciant lenders who were "exploited" by such mortgages, not the borrowers with "little documentation" (of any ability to repay).

Anyway, Massey's one of those guys who damns lenders for "redlining" from one side of his mouth, and for "predatory lending" from the other.

jody said...

back in the 90s when i was a young undergraduate, i sat in class and listened to a princeton economics professor tell me that the national debt did not matter, and then watched him explain why for the next 20 minutes, using economist mathematics. it didn't seem right to me, but i wasn't old enough or experienced enough to articulate why.

i thought about him a couple times these past 2 weeks. he was dead wrong, of course, like economists usually are on the big questions. sometimes they are pretty good at explaining more simple and limited behaviors but when they put all their knowledge together and make predictions they just blow it totally.

he seemed like a good guy, and i hung out in his office once in a while, soaking up stories about making and losing fortunes on stocks in the early 80s and why he only buys bonds now, and hey, you shouldn't listen to financial advisors, just buying and holding stocks almost at random makes you just as much money (he was a major proponent of the random walk hypothesis). jewish of course, but not hostile to gentiles from what i saw, just good at math and interested in money like lots of ashkenazi jewish guys, and now found himself as a PHD in economics, teaching at princeton.

don't trust our leaders. they're wrong, often. frequently it is best to ignore their paper credentials and degrees.

Anonymous said...

Was it THAT easy to get loans back then?

You never heard of "ninja" loans? No income, no (legal) job, and no assets needed to get a loan to buy your home?

Anonymous said...

Spotting the sleight of hand? I LOVE spotting the sleight of hand.

"Are you really sure the foreclosures relating to illegal immigrant 'owned' homes?

Was it THAT easy to get loans back then?

If that's true then what the #%$!@$ were banks doing."

Alt-A and multifamily loans were one way of doing so yes, but I suspect that the more established immigrants here bought larger houses with these loans and then rented them to several illegal families at a time themselves. When the illegals took a bath and couldn't make payments to their slumlords it all collapsed.

Eric said...

In the early 1990s the United States began militarizing its border with Mexico in an effort to halt unauthorized migration.

Wait, what? What is this guy smoking? And even if it was true, clearly the effort was a colossal failure.

Anonymous said...

Lots of "poor" hispanics stash cash instead of investing it in transparent vehicles and they sure as hell aren't going to tell anyone they have cash in their mattress.

Anonymous said...

You can't have a default without both a stupid borrower and a stupid lender. The tragedy here is that people who had nothing to do with issuing or receiving the loans are suffering from the economic collapse caused by this stupidity, while the Wall Street banks who were too incompetent to judge poor credit risks were bailed out by the taxpayers with no strings attached, and the idiots who took out zero down mortgages are defended in high places by people like Massey.

Anonymous said...

You can't have a default without both a stupid borrower and a stupid lender.

That's a pretty broad brush. In the initial stages of the downturn I'm sure there were a lot of those stupid borrowers. But we've had official unemployment of over 9% for a long time now, and real unemployment of nearer to 16%. There are a lot of people who have defaulted or are now defaulting on their mortgage, who are simply casualties of Wall Street and DC's stupidity and corruption.

MIchelle said...

"'Princeton sociologist

Depressing in itself: a supposedly well educated, engaged person just gives us stereotypes and tropes.'

Remember Michelle graduated with honors for her 'sea of white folks' thesis."


Thank-you for reminding them of that.

Anonymous said...

In the early 1990s the United States began militarizing its border with Mexico in an effort to halt unauthorized migration.

Eric - "Wait, what? What is this guy smoking? And even if it was true, clearly the effort was a colossal failure."

I think its deliberate.

We are supposed to believe that border is under military control but Mexican immigration is a mighty force of nature that mere humans cannot hope to halt.

Thus through this falsehood his willing readers can assume that the US had tried to control the border and failed and thus further attempts at control are doomed. Attempts he doesnt want made knowing that they might well succeed.

Eric said...

...but they were left uniquely vulnerable to economic exploitation— such as the promise of a mortgage with little documentation required at signing.

There was really an easy way to avoid that little problem. Not a lot of "exploitation" by loan originators of Mexicans in Mexico.

David Davenport said...

In the early 1990s the United States began militarizing its border with Mexico in an effort to halt unauthorized migration.

That' the "Migration of species is Nature's way, it's futile trying to fight it" meme.

Anonymous said...

"That' the "Migration of species is Nature's way, it's futile trying to fight it" meme."

Yet in every other respect the United States government is competent to do anything it attempts: get every child through high school, eradicate discrimination and disparity, provide for the healthcare of 300 million Americans, civilize Afghanistan and Iraq...

Anonymous said...

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/32152

SWPL CENTRAL. So, these are the people who feed us the news in MSM.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Well, militarising the border is wrong, and Hispanics being foreclosed on is wrong. Therefore the first causes the second. What further evidence could we possibly want?

Here's the HBD question you may want to answer next: what is the average IQ of people who refuse to think?