A reader has put together a helpful video mashup of George W. Bush's wonderful 2002 speeches on lowering mortgage credit standards for minorities along with snark comments.
On a local radio station here they just played audio of another Bush speech about making home ownership more easy to attain. He's going on in his usual tortured syntax about how difficult it is to buy a home due to all the confusing fine print in mortgage contracts. He says, "You can imagine how difficult it is for someone newly arrived from ... Peru ... to understand it."
Peru?
Can anyone have ANY doubt that he almost said "Mexico" ... intended to say Mexico ... but caught himself? Peru -- give me a break! That plan to make mortgages easier to get was always, even in the a plan to grant American property to millions of illegal Mexican nationals (no, not Peruvians) to permanently implant them in the country, render them more immune to deportation, and harden the case for amnesty. (" They must be given citizenship. After all, we can't deport millions of mortgage holders, it will crash the economy!"
A reader has put together a helpful video mashup of George W. Bush's wonderful 2002 speeches on lowering mortgage credit standards for minorities along with snark comments.
Simplistic BS, and not even good parody at that. WHere was the obligatory AC/DC soundtrack "Highway to Hell" to round things out? Anyway, Bush's statement of so many billion to "minority markets" doesn't mean that the feds or the banks "gave away" 400 billion to "minorities". Its like pledges made by charitable donors- on paper the money is promised, not "given away." Can anyone come up with credible proof of this vast disbursement of 400 bil in mortgage money to minorities, or is lamer video all that is avialable as "proof"? Yeah.. I thought so..
In any event, CRA regs only covered banks and thrifts and they only made about 25% of the mortgage pool, some of which went to whites. But of course our video genius doesnt mention that..
Then there is the simplistic math. Bush also said that his plan hoped to increase minority homeownership by at least 5.5 million families. Here's how our deep thinker video creator "solves" the mortgage meltdown mystery by blaming it all on "minorities." He divides today's 700 billion bailout into 5.5 million minorities and presto! Yeap.. minororotees caused this heah meltdown at approx 127,000 per head.
But notice the fallacy. Bush spoke of future minority homeowners and credit dollars to be made available in the future. Under the fuzzy "future math" of our deep thinker video genius, he divides money that hasnt been spent yet, by minority homeowners that don't even exist yet, to "solve" TODAY'S mortgage mystery. Can y'all say duh... I knew you could...
"Under the fuzzy "future math" of our deep thinker video genius, he divides money that hasnt been spent yet, by minority homeowners that don't even exist yet"
You realize that the speech was made in 2002, right? And you know that targeted lending to "underrepresented" minorities started long before 2002, right? (It has been touted as an underreported success of the Clinton years or some such.)
Of course the simple math is never supposed to be a "proof." (Why would anyone think that? I don't recall seeing a "QED" in the video.) 700 billion is not the value of bad mortgages, after all, just a really large number that Paulson think will jump start the credit market and can pass Congress. But the simple math does put things in perspective.
Once all of the 5.5 million families have had their mortgages (and some must have already), what percentage do you think will default (or have already defaulted)? And they will only represent a fraction of loans to underrepresented minorities.
Not only was that speech made in June 2002 (= six and a half years ago), but in December 2003 (= almost five years ago) Bush made another speech, in which he said:
"Last year I set a goal to add 5.5 million new minority homeowners in America by the end of the decade. That is an attainable goal; that is an essential goal. And we're making progress toward that goal. In the past 18 months, more than 1 million minority families have become homeowners. And there's more that we can do to achieve the goal. The law I sign today [the American Dream Downpayment Act] will help us build on this progress in a very practical way."
One million in 18 months. Let's see, conservatively assuming that the bubble stayed flat from 2003 to 2008, or alternatively that the foreclosure rate kept it flat, thus providing a more or less constant rate of minority homeownership increase, puts us at close to 4 million this year, or most of Bush's goal.
But why depend on "simplistic math"? Let's read USA Today from April 2007:
"Across the nation, black and Hispanic borrowers helped fuel a multiyear housing boom, accounting for 49% of the increase in homeowners from 1995 to 2005, says Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies. But Hispanics and African-Americans were far more likely to leverage the American dream with subprime loans — higher-cost products for buyers with impaired credit — that are now going bad at an alarming rate. About 46% of Hispanics and 55% of blacks who took out purchase mortgages in 2005 got higher-cost loans, compared with about 17% of whites and Asians, according to Federal Reserve data."
(That was one and a half years ago.)
Whoops. More math again. Darn numbers. Numbers are trash!
Where did I find those quotes? I merely pulled them out of Steve's article here, which it seems you didn't bother to read, too tall.
Did you read only this current post and - in your haste - post a comment?
You realize that the speech was made in 2002, right? And you know that targeted lending to "underrepresented" minorities started long before 2002, right?
True, but that still does little to prove that 5 mil minororotees materialized to receive the 400bil in loans. 400 bil is over half the bailout amount. I rather doubt that blacks and mexicans cornered this amount of cash, even if targeted loans began back in the Clinton era.
Besides, the claim of vast minority involvement is undermined by Sailer's own data on the infamous sub-primes, which he showed as only 6-12% of outstanding loans.
Furthermore the CRA regulations under which the so-called "affrmative action" loans were made, actually did the LEAST damage in the bailout mess. The following Biz Week article debunks numerous conservative claims about the CRA "causing the sub-prime mess."
Once all of the 5.5 million families have had their mortgages (and some must have already), what percentage do you think will default (or have already defaulted)? And they will only represent a fraction of loans to underrepresented minorities.
The notion of high minority default rates playing a "big role" in the current meltdown is dubious. We have already seen that CRA coverages were actually among the better regulated and conservative practices involved in the current meltdown. We have already seen that the infamous sub-primes are minor players overall when total loans are considered. But even if this were not so, the notion is still dubious, because you have to look at the overall weight of the cash borrowed. If for example, minorities defaulted at a 45% rate yet only borrowed 20% of the total cash, then that leaves 80% of the total cash in the hands of white people to go forth and declare bankruptcy. That's the fallacy of folks using simple default percentages.
Rather than beat up on blacks and mexicans as convenient scapegoats, people ought to look a little closer to home as to the causes of the current meltdown. The notion that these heah minororotees tipped the US economy into bankruptcy requires vast stretches of the imagination. As one web article puts it:
Just imagine the flights of fancy that the theory of borrower malevolence and Wall Street victimization requires conservatives to take: All these no-account folks, you see, got together and forced investment banks to engineer subprime mortgages into highly leveraged securities. Then they tricked all manner of hedge funds and pension funds and financial institutions into buying these lousy products. Just for good measure, these struggling homeowners then persuaded bond-rating agencies to misrepresent the risk associated with these securities.
What the Whites on this blog are really complaining about is lack of freedom of association in our business dealings. The Community Reinvestment Act was originally designed to give Black borrowers a chance to receive a loan from White-run banks. Even if the act has not caused the mortgage crisis, it represents the fact that we cannot discriminate legally in our business dealings, either by race or by any other means. This act means that banks are guilty until proven innocent, and the only way to prove their innocence is to give loans to minorities even if these minorities are not qualified. Since the banks cannot ask about race directly they are required to show that they are lending to areas that have a high concentration of minorities.
If we were allowed to simply lend without affirmative action legislation then banks could not blame the government and would only be able to blame themselves when they make bad loans. Blacks, Hispanics and Whites would be able to either do business with a mainstream bank or with a local bank that only does business with their own race.
Since we do not have the ability to choose who we do business with, when something goes wrong the regulation limiting our freedom gets blamed. I want to be able to loan what little money I have to whomever I choose, not who the government says I have to in the name of equality.
On a local radio station here they just played audio of another Bush speech about making home ownership more easy to attain. He's going on in his usual tortured syntax about how difficult it is to buy a home due to all the confusing fine print in mortgage contracts. He says, "You can imagine how difficult it is for someone newly arrived from ... Peru ... to understand it."
ReplyDeletePeru?
Can anyone have ANY doubt that he almost said "Mexico" ... intended to say Mexico ... but caught himself? Peru -- give me a break! That plan to make mortgages easier to get was always, even in the a plan to grant American property to millions of illegal Mexican nationals (no, not Peruvians) to permanently implant them in the country, render them more immune to deportation, and harden the case for amnesty. (" They must be given citizenship. After all, we can't deport millions of mortgage holders, it will crash the economy!"
A reader has put together a helpful video mashup of George W. Bush's wonderful 2002 speeches on lowering mortgage credit standards for minorities along with snark comments.
ReplyDeleteSimplistic BS, and not even good parody at that. WHere was the obligatory AC/DC soundtrack "Highway to Hell" to round things out? Anyway, Bush's statement of so many billion to "minority markets" doesn't mean that the feds or the banks "gave away" 400 billion to "minorities". Its like pledges made by charitable donors- on paper the money is promised, not "given away." Can anyone come up with credible proof of this vast disbursement of 400 bil in mortgage money to minorities, or is lamer video all that is avialable as "proof"? Yeah.. I thought so..
In any event, CRA regs only covered banks and thrifts and they only made about 25% of the mortgage pool, some of which went to whites. But of course our video genius doesnt mention that..
Then there is the simplistic math. Bush also said that his plan hoped to increase minority homeownership by at least 5.5 million families. Here's how our deep thinker video creator "solves" the mortgage meltdown mystery by blaming it all on "minorities." He divides today's 700 billion bailout into 5.5 million minorities and presto! Yeap.. minororotees caused this heah meltdown at approx 127,000 per head.
But notice the fallacy. Bush spoke of future minority homeowners and credit dollars to be made available in the future. Under the fuzzy "future math" of our deep thinker video genius, he divides money that hasnt been spent yet, by minority homeowners that don't even exist yet, to "solve" TODAY'S mortgage mystery. Can y'all say duh... I knew you could...
Too tall:
ReplyDelete"Under the fuzzy "future math" of our deep thinker video genius, he divides money that hasnt been spent yet, by minority homeowners that don't even exist yet"
You realize that the speech was made in 2002, right? And you know that targeted lending to "underrepresented" minorities started long before 2002, right? (It has been touted as an underreported success of the Clinton years or some such.)
Of course the simple math is never supposed to be a "proof." (Why would anyone think that? I don't recall seeing a "QED" in the video.) 700 billion is not the value of bad mortgages, after all, just a really large number that Paulson think will jump start the credit market and can pass Congress. But the simple math does put things in perspective.
Once all of the 5.5 million families have had their mortgages (and some must have already), what percentage do you think will default (or have already defaulted)? And they will only represent a fraction of loans to underrepresented minorities.
too tall,
ReplyDeleteNot only was that speech made in June 2002 (= six and a half years ago), but in December 2003 (= almost five years ago) Bush made another speech, in which he said:
"Last year I set a goal to add 5.5 million new minority homeowners in America by the end of the decade. That is an attainable goal; that is an essential goal. And we're making progress toward that goal. In the past 18 months, more than 1 million minority families have become homeowners. And there's more that we can do to achieve the goal. The law I sign today [the American Dream Downpayment Act] will help us build on this progress in a very practical way."
One million in 18 months. Let's see, conservatively assuming that the bubble stayed flat from 2003 to 2008, or alternatively that the foreclosure rate kept it flat, thus providing a more or less constant rate of minority homeownership increase, puts us at close to 4 million this year, or most of Bush's goal.
But why depend on "simplistic math"? Let's read USA Today from April 2007:
"Across the nation, black and Hispanic borrowers helped fuel a multiyear housing boom, accounting for 49% of the increase in homeowners from 1995 to 2005, says Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies. But Hispanics and African-Americans were far more likely to leverage the American dream with subprime loans — higher-cost products for buyers with impaired credit — that are now going bad at an alarming rate. About 46% of Hispanics and 55% of blacks who took out purchase mortgages in 2005 got higher-cost loans, compared with about 17% of whites and Asians, according to Federal Reserve data."
(That was one and a half years ago.)
Whoops. More math again. Darn numbers. Numbers are trash!
Where did I find those quotes? I merely pulled them out of Steve's article here, which it seems you didn't bother to read, too tall.
Did you read only this current post and - in your haste - post a comment?
tommy sez:
ReplyDeleteYou realize that the speech was made in 2002, right? And you know that targeted lending to "underrepresented" minorities started long before 2002, right?
True, but that still does little to prove that 5 mil minororotees materialized to receive the 400bil in loans. 400 bil is over half the bailout amount. I rather doubt that blacks and mexicans cornered this amount of cash, even if targeted loans began back in the Clinton era.
Besides, the claim of vast minority involvement is undermined by Sailer's own data on the infamous sub-primes, which he showed as only 6-12% of outstanding loans.
Furthermore the CRA regulations under which the so-called "affrmative action" loans were made, actually did the LEAST damage in the bailout mess. The following Biz Week article debunks numerous conservative claims about the CRA "causing the sub-prime mess."
http://www.businessweek.com/investing/insights/blog/archives/2008/09/community_reinv.html
Once all of the 5.5 million families have had their mortgages (and some must have already), what percentage do you think will default (or have already defaulted)? And they will only represent a fraction of loans to underrepresented minorities.
The notion of high minority default rates playing a "big role" in the current meltdown is dubious. We have already seen that CRA coverages were actually among the better regulated and conservative practices involved in the current meltdown. We have already seen that the infamous sub-primes are minor players overall when total loans are considered. But even if this were not so, the notion is still dubious, because you have to look at the overall weight of the cash borrowed. If for example, minorities defaulted at a 45% rate yet only borrowed 20% of the total cash, then that leaves 80% of the total cash in the hands of white people to go forth and declare bankruptcy. That's the fallacy of folks using simple default percentages.
Rather than beat up on blacks and mexicans as convenient scapegoats, people ought to look a little closer to home as to the causes of the current meltdown. The notion that these heah minororotees tipped the US economy into bankruptcy requires vast stretches of the imagination. As one web article puts it:
Just imagine the flights of fancy that the theory of borrower malevolence and Wall Street victimization requires conservatives to take: All these no-account folks, you see, got together and forced investment banks to engineer subprime mortgages into highly leveraged securities. Then they tricked all manner of hedge funds and pension funds and financial institutions into buying these lousy products. Just for good measure, these struggling homeowners then persuaded bond-rating agencies to misrepresent the risk associated with these securities.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122282690823092989.html
I am generally sympathetic to the conservative cause but not when such fantasies are being spun.
Can I say something openly racist?
ReplyDeleteWhat the Whites on this blog are really complaining about is lack of freedom of association in our business dealings. The Community Reinvestment Act was originally designed to give Black borrowers a chance to receive a loan from White-run banks. Even if the act has not caused the mortgage crisis, it represents the fact that we cannot discriminate legally in our business dealings, either by race or by any other means. This act means that banks are guilty until proven innocent, and the only way to prove their innocence is to give loans to minorities even if these minorities are not qualified. Since the banks cannot ask about race directly they are required to show that they are lending to areas that have a high concentration of minorities.
If we were allowed to simply lend without affirmative action legislation then banks could not blame the government and would only be able to blame themselves when they make bad loans. Blacks, Hispanics and Whites would be able to either do business with a mainstream bank or with a local bank that only does business with their own race.
Since we do not have the ability to choose who we do business with, when something goes wrong the regulation limiting our freedom gets blamed. I want to be able to loan what little money I have to whomever I choose, not who the government says I have to in the name of equality.