THE CRA HAD LITTLE TO NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CRISIS. Holy crap it takes a special kind of person to argue an unsubstantiated point with a person who actually worked in the industry and enforced the law.,
You are talking to a person who understands the law. I enforced the law. Banks were not encouraged to make substandard loans.....ever. They get CRA credit for any lending in these areas. I bet you didn't know that a loan to build a shopping center or revitalize an old factory or warehouse is much of what you see in bank's CRA portfolios vs residential mortgage loans. Banks will invest in pools or grants that help low to mod borrowers There may have been investments in their portfolios that may not have been made if not for an attempt to earn CRA credit. I'll give you that but that was/is a small portion of what most banks do. I can explain those too if you want me to.
You are basically calling me a liar. I have deep subject matter expertise of the workings of this law and you basically said I know nothing. I am not providing an opinion but the fact of the law. If you want to point a finger, look at Slick Willy and W for their policies of home ownership for everyone....completely outside of CRA.
Interestingly when I google CRA causing the recession, all the articles from right-leaning sources. Read the joint congressional study. It is a bipartisan report on the topic.
I haven't questioned your expertise at all on this OM? Where'd you get THAT from? I simply asked why was the CRA even needed? Why do you think it had little or no impact? And why do you think it was better than just leaving banks alone to run their businesses and make their loans to whom they determined financially fit to repay them?
All of that other stuff you're saying I said about you is "fake news".
I'm not in the banking industry like you are OM, but I've read several well researched and documented thesis on the housing collapse:
The housing boom and bust by Dr. Thomas Sowell
Reckless endangerment by Gretchen Morgensen
Architects of ruin by Peter Schweizer
and Con job by Crystal Wright
...all of which pointed directly at malfeasance and incompetence in both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae along with the banking industry and regulators who
all contributed to this financial fiasco.
In my mind there is no escaping the common underpinning among all the players...big inefficient, cumbersome, over reaching, non performing, unnecessary Leviathan Government.
