[ExI] Sudden outbreak of democracy baffles US pundits

gts gts_2000 at yahoo.com
Tue Oct 14 13:36:24 UTC 2008


Lee:

>> Quite right. But did anyone mention the legal climate
>> that congress has created since the late sixties? 
>> Mortgage and loan lenders can be *sued* for turning down loans, 
>> and very often successfully so, because of pieces of legislation 
>> going back to 1977.

So say some conservatives, who want to blame the Community Reinvestment Act which made discriminatory lending practices unlawful. 

But the reality is that the crisis stems from the explosion in the market in subprime mortgages which started circa 2001 -- more than 20 years after the CRA was passed. 

If you want to understand the causes of the current financial crisis, you need to look at the causes of this relatively recent explosion in the market for subprime and alt-A mortgages. 

-gts



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