Liberals Fueled Wall Street Woes

Prudent best practices in lending fell by the wayside under pressure from liberal activists and "community organizers" who advocated "Change" to loosen lending restrictions to minorities. If you liked this "Change", you'll just love the "Change" the Trojan Horse has in mind for us.

clipped from www.nypost.com Mortgage lending took that "reckless and unsustainable turn" because of regulation - regulation driven by liberals and progressives, not free-market "deregulators." Pushed hard by politicians and community activists, the regulators systematically and deliberately altered financially sound lending practices. The mortgage market was humming along just fine when, in the late 1980s, progressives decided that it needed to be "fixed." Their complaint: Some ethnic groups got approved for mortgages at lower rates than others. In reality, mortgage lenders were simply being prudent - taking care to provide mortgages to those who could best afford to make the payments. The shift began in 1989, when Congress amended the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act to force banks to collect racial data on mortgage applicants. clipped from www.nypost.com Gone (as "arbitrary" and "outdated") were traditional lending requirements such as requiring a down payment or limiting mortgage payments to 28 percent of income.