We’re seeing the NY Times attempt to rewrite history, even to the incredible extent of giving Obama and Democrats credit for winning the Iraq war. Investor’s Business Daily deconstructs myths and facts about the CRA before it too goes down the memory hole -
The Community Reinvestment Act is to blame for the financial crisis, but it so powerfully serves Democrats’ interests that they’ll do anything to protect it — including revising history.
For example -
Myth: The CRA did not force anyone to do subprime loans or take excessive risks.
Fact: Subprime loans were the vehicle banks used to satisfy CRA compliance, and Clinton and his regulators encouraged their use. Before Clinton took office, subprimes were virtually unheard of. By the time he left, they made up more than 9% of the market for mortgage originations. Today they’re 20%.
“It’s instructive to go back to the early stages of the subprime market, which has essentially emerged out of the CRA,” ex-Fed chief Alan Greenspan said in recent testimony on the roots of the crisis.
Clinton pushed banks to grant mortgages to minorities with poor credit by using “flexible” underwriting standards — or risk being branded racist. Rules were weakened to the point where welfare and unemployment checks were accepted as qualifying income.
This is why I won’t argue politics with my brother, and why my comment policy advises people that it’s useless to even bring up certain topics. There are two histories being documented, without even the benefit of a Star Trek alternate universe. And when I’ve tried to engage with lefty commenters who are civil to address the fact that we’re not working with the same set of facts, it hasn’t worked; evidently they conclude it’s pointless just like I have. I applaud IBD’s effort, but I don’t think it’s going to work. The “big lie” technique is alive, well, and extremely effective. Somehow it even trumps their own words on video. The media and the Democratic leadership (but I repeat myself) have cynically adopted the rules the OSS wrote in Hitler’s psychological profile:
His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
