Republican Minority Report on Financial Crisis: Deficits, Blacks Caused It

[Joanne98]

You can add to the seven dirty words the four others that Republicans never want you to hear: “Wall Street,” “shadow banking,” “interconnection” and “deregulation.” Marcy and Shahien and Mike Konczal and Brad DeLong have you covered on that.

But this debacle has taken a more hilarious turn. Because the Republicans on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission had to come up with some “minority report” to give their side of the story, they rushed out a comprehensive primer on the causes of the crisis. You’ll be surprised to know that you can summarize the entire financial meltdown in 9 pages, with 3 footnotes. Who knew it was so easy to understand? In fairness, this represents only a “portion” of their findings, so that’s comforting, I guess.

The paper seriously starts with the declarative sentence “Bubbles happen.” That’s the level of intelligence the GOP will bring to bear on this debate. They, in short, don’t think the housing bubble “was a sufficient condition” for the financial crisis. I guess all that talk about mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps was just part of an elaborate work of fiction. Their point is that poor black people really caused the crisis, along with the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, which took 25 years off from destroying the US economy before coming back to haunt everyone.

All of this hid the REAL problem highlighted by the crisis, big gubmint and its indebtedness:

http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/12/15/republican-minority-report-on-financial-crisis-deficits-blacks-caused-it/

[KeepItReal]

1. Hey GOP, remember AMERIQUEST MORTGAGE?

Ameriquest, the lender the epitomized everything that was f*cked up about the subprime mortgage meltdown, is dead.

The lender stopped taking loan applications Aug 1st and its assets (including $45 billion of loans) were sold to Citigroup late last month.

Last year Ameriquest agreed to pay $325 million in a multistate class-action settlement over claims of deceptive lending practices which included failing to disclose that the loans had adjustable rates, failing to disclose the terms of the loan, refinancing homeowners into inappropriate loans, inflating home appraisals, and charging excessive fees such as prepayment penalties and loan origination fees. Ameriquest did not admit wrongdoing.

Earlier this year a number of former Ameriquest mortgage brokers spoke to NPR, detailing the steady diet of corruption that led to Ameriquest's downfall. Commonplace tactics included "sending papers to the Art Department," a term that was code for forging w2s in order to qualify consumers for loans they couldn't afford.

http://consumerist.com/2007/09/ameriquest-is-dead.html

[Blue_Tires]

2. ttt

[JohnWxy]

3. Not an inevitable result of Trickle Down Econo-comics.