Posted by
Always To The Right on Monday, September 29, 2008 1:32:56 PM
Stanley Kurtz takes a look at how the Community Reinvestment Act was
used by activist groups to pressure banks into lending money to
high-risk applicants, and how “community organizers” like ACORN
played a front-line role. ACORN insinuated itself into the process by
using CRA to block bank sales and mergers and force lending
institutions to lower standards for applicants. They also championed
the sale of these loans to Fannie Mae as a key program that would
alleviate the lenders of any risk in lending
I wrote about this last week from the fascinating perspective of 1999,
when this effort got mainstream media notice for its supposed success.
Now, however, no one wants to talk about the “community organizers” of
ACORN, La Raza, and the Urban League, and how they used identity
politics to distort the lending market. This closes a loop from that
post in describing exactly how the CRA got used to extort shaky loans.
The government relied on ACORN and other “community organizers” to file
nuisance complaints in order to force the bad lending practices that
created this mess.