Deep Root Causes of “Surface Root Causes”

We keep hearing that the root cause of the market problems is the “Housing crises”. The fact is, they didn’t dig deep enough to find the Root Causes of the Surface “root cause”. Fannie and Freddie virtually elmininated all sensible qualification for acquiring mortgages. Members of congress covered up the danger of this plan for years. These names should be named and named loudly–and not just in silly insgnificant blogs like this one.

We will now watch as Barack Obama no longer Phones It In. He’s going to push for this bill like the Devil in the next few days. And while he does, more articles like the one below will be unavoidable. Because there will be more Trillions and Fannie and Freddie, by the way, are STILL not regulated.

Socialism is NOT acceptable in the United States Of America. We are not the Union of Socialist States at least for one more day.  They can place the blame anywhere they want, but the truth is, there weren’t enough Democrats to pass this bill. Some Democrats are NOT socialists. It’s time to stop talking about “putting the country first” when you really mean “Put me and my friends and lobbyists first”. It’s time to address Real Root Causes and stop with the smoke and mirrors. Now, Nancy will have to cut the crap,  stop shooting her socialist mouth off, and REALLY negotiate something that’s actually for the people of America. And Barack Obama, in shock, will have to do some work for a change instead of blowing Hopey Changey smoke up everybody’s butt.

America is finally fed up.

No. the root cause has not been addressed yet at all. Perhaps, just perhaps, enough brave Op Ed folks will make it happen. Perhaps, just perhaps, investigative reporting will revive itself in spite of resistance. We don’t get news from Keith Olbermann. We get news from people who go into the underbelly of problems and solve them.

And now,  here’s the first piece in an oncoming onslaught of exposes

O’S DANGEROUS PALS

BARACK’S ‘ORGANIZER’ BUDS PUSHED FOR BAD MORTGAGES

By STANLEY KURTZ

Chutzpah: ACORN’s drive to lower mortgage standards paved the way for the meltdown – yet last week, it was holding protests like this one in Florida, trying to get a cut of the financial-market-rescue bill.

Posted: 3:53 am
September 29, 2008

WHAT exactly does a “community organizer” do? Barack Obama’s rise has left many Americans asking themselves that question. Here’s a big part of the answer: Community organizers intimidate banks into making high-risk loans to customers with poor credit.

In the name of fairness to minorities, community organizers occupy private offices, chant inside bank lobbies, and confront executives at their homes – and thereby force financial institutions to direct hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages to low-credit customers.

In other words, community organizers help to undermine the US economy by pushing the banking system into a sinkhole of bad loans. And Obama has spent years training and funding the organizers who do it.

THE seeds of today’s financial meltdown lie in the Commu nity Reinvestment Act – a law passed in 1977 and made riskier by unwise amendments and regulatory rulings in later decades.

CRA was meant to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, often minorities living in unstable neighborhoods. That has provided an opening to radical groups like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to abuse the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in “subprime” loans to often uncreditworthy poor and minority customers.

Any bank that wants to expand or merge with another has to show it has complied with CRA – and approval can be held up by complaints filed by groups like ACORN.

In fact, intimidation tactics, public charges of racism and threats to use CRA to block business expansion have enabled ACORN to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contributions from America’s financial institutions.

Banks already overexposed by these shaky loans were pushed still further in the wrong direction when government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began buying up their bad loans and offering them for sale on world markets.

Fannie and Freddie acted in response to Clinton administration pressure to boost homeownership rates among minorities and the poor. However compassionate the motive, the result of this systematic disregard for normal credit standards has been financial disaster.

ONE key pioneer of ACORN’s subprime-loan shakedown racket was Madeline Talbott – an activist with extensive ties to Barack Obama. She was also in on the ground floor of the disastrous turn in Fannie Mae’s mortgage policies.

Long the director of Chicago ACORN, Talbott is a specialist in “direct action” – organizers’ term for their militant tactics of intimidation and disruption. Perhaps her most famous stunt was leading a group of ACORN protesters breaking into a meeting of the Chicago City Council to push for a “living wage” law, shouting in defiance as she was arrested for mob action and disorderly conduct. But her real legacy may be her drive to push banks into making risky mortgage loans.