Credit Where the Credit Crisis Is Due

I have demonstrated previously on the hallowed pages of Obama Watch that the economic crisis as it now exists is fully the fault of the Democratic party in the United States. Their semi-retarded politics designed it and, while it is certain that some Republicans cooperated with and facilitated their (always) hare-brained ideas, it is also true that Democrats intentionally stepped over the bodies of protesting Republicans to enact the policies that have brought on the current economic morass.

A crisis of the magnitude of that which the country now faces has the interesting consequence of producing stark honesty where one would not necessarily expect to find such honesty. In reading the book, A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers, author Lawrence G. Mcdonald, who seems generally very sympathetic to Bill Clinton personally and to his administration, nevertheless writes (from the historical perspective of an industry insider - Mcdonald was a Vice President at Lehman Brothers):

Roberta Achtenberg, the daughter of a Russian-born owner of a Los Angeles neighborhood grocery store, was plucked by President Clinton from relative obscurity in 1993 and elevated to the position of assistant secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Roberta and Bill were united in their desire to increase home ownership in poor and minority communities.



And despite a barrage of objections led by Senator Jesse Helms, who referred to Achtenberg as that "damn lesbian," the lady took up her appointment in the new administration, citing innate racism as one of the main reasons why banks were reluctant to lend to those without funds.

In the ensuing couple of years, Roberta Achtenberg harnessed all of the formidable energy on the massed ranks of the United States bankers, sometimes threatening, sometimes berating, sometimes bullying - anything to persuade the banks to provide mortgages to people who might not have been up to the challenge of coping with up-front down payments and regular monthly payments.

Between 1993 and 1999, more than two million such clients became new homeowners. In her two-year tenure as assistant secretary, she set up a national grid of offices staffed by attorneys and investigators. Their principal aim was to enforce the laws against the banks, the laws that dealt with discrimination. Some of the fines leveled at the banks ran into the millions, to drive home Achtenberg's avowed intent to utilize the law to change the ethos of providing mortgage money in the United States of America.

Banks were compelled to jump into line, and soon they were making thousands of loans without any cash-down deposits whatsoever: an unprecedented situation. Mortgage officers inside the banks were forced to bend or break their own rules in order to achieve a good Community Reinvestment Act rating, which would please the administration by demonstrating generosity to underprivileged borrowers even if they might default. Easy mortgages were the invention of Bill Clinton's Democrats.

However, there was, in the mid- to late 1990s one enormous advantage: amid general prosperity, the housing market was strong and prices were rising steadily. At that point in time, mortgage defaults were relatively few in number and the securitization of mortgages, which had such disastrous consequences during the financial crisis that began in 2007, barely existed.

Nonetheless, there were many beady-eyed financiers who looked askance at this new morality and privately yearned for the days when bank policies were strictly conservative, when credit was flatly denied to anyone without the proven ability to repay.

And at the center of this seething disquiet, somewhere between the persuasive silken-tongued members of the banking lobby and the missionary zeal of Roberta Achtenberg, stood William J. Clinton, whose heart, not for the first time, may have been ruling his head.

Emphasis added throughout. But catch the specific wording: "innate racism" is the reason that loans were not extended to "those without funds"? The Clintonistas were willing to do "anything to persuade the banks to provide mortgages to people who might not have been up to the challenge of coping with up-front down payments and regular monthly payments"? Achtenberg's intent was to "change the ethos of providing mortgage money"? Banks and mortgage companies were "forced to break their own rules"?

Now hear this: "Easy mortgages were the invention of Bill Clinton's Democrats." And all those mortgage companies, investment banks, and community banks that are now getting the blame were nonetheless peopled by "beady-eyed financiers who looked askance at this new morality."

Remember, the same people who designed this economic earthquake are in the process of taking over large swathes of American business, the energy industry, and health care - and in the case of Congressional Democrats, it is not merely the same party, but actually the same people involved.

The Democratic party is either populated by the largest concentration of morons in the universe, or is populated by an exceedingly large contingent of wholly evil individuals who are bent on pursuing their utopian political goals in the face of reality and at the expense of their constituents. What idiot actually believes that racism is the reason that banks won't lend money to people who can't pay? What fool thinks that it is a positive step forward to compel banks to forsake their own rules and extend loans to those who have not even demonstrated an ability to regularly and fully pay rent? Only Democrats are capable of these anti-intellectual paroxysms into mental disease. Or at least they are the only ones who can do it and escape being committed....

Are these the people that you really want to trust to do what is best for you and the country in regard to your health care? Have these same individuals not already demonstrated their inarguable inability to get anything right? Look around....

Democrat, thy name is guilty. See what thou hast wrought.