On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 6:17 PM, David B. Shemano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > As long as we subsidize home ownership through tax policy, housing policy, > banking policy, etc., we are going to have bubbles. You may need an Alan > Greenspan or a Wall Street wizard to ignite the match, but the fuel was > already there and will continue to be there until we collectively stop > smoking the crack pipe of the alleged intrinsic beneits of home ownership.
This is all completely irrelevant to the main question of this thread: did political pressure (specifically the CRA) force lenders into making even a single loan that was otherwise considered unprofitable or uneconomic by the lender? There is zero, repeat ZERO, evidence to suggest this ever took place. Lenders made subprime loans because they were enormously profitable. Period. The poor and the minorities, as always, make convenient scapegoats after the fact, for problems created by rich bankers. Whether or not increased homeownership is a desirable political goal is a completely different question that should be discussed on its own merits. Lets not confuse two different issues here. > and policymakers continue to repeat the mantra that the "problem" is that > housing prices are too low and all we need to do to solve the mess is prop up > home prices (while at the same time we apparently need to bailout > homebuilders to ensure MORE home construction, because those are jobs, jobs, > jobs). This is insanity. Can you provide some sources for the above? I don't know of any politician or policymaker who said we need to prop up homeprices or that we need to bailout homebuilders. Many politicians and other have said foreclosures need to be stopped. That is a completely different thing. And the ones getting bailed out are bankers not homebuilders. -raghu. -- Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
