Providing the substantiation wasn’t very difficult, but it does take time to find it.

As for namecalling, that wasn’t my intent. I wanted to point out faulty reasoning on your part. I could have done so more civily, I suppose, but my patience does have limits:

“Of course, instead of actually reading what he wrote and why he wrote it, anything can be explained away…”

Look familiar? It should; you wrote it. It didn’t impress me as particularly civil at the time…

Thanks for the substantiation. That wasn’t so hard, was it?

If I recall, that regulation was put in place in the 1970′s when redlining was still a very serious problem. There was nothing in the regulations that required or even encouraged lenders to come up with No Income Verification loans, interest only loans, etc. In fact, these types of loans didn’t seriously proliferate until after 2000.

However, on another note…

As for the “stupid, and “obtuse” namecalling, that is not allowed here. Spirited conversations and vigorous debates are encouraged, but civility is an absolute requirement. There’s a lot that we not only allow, but encourage — especially divergent opinions. But behavior like that is not tolerated here.

It would indeed by insulting to “insinuate that HRC approval” had anything to do with WaMu’s failure.

Krikorian made no such insinuation.

Bill Clinton was not satisfied with the way the CRA was traditionally enforced. In 1993 he ordered new regulations for the act’s enforcement. If I may quote
Wikipedia again:

“The new rules went into effect on January 31, 1995 and featured: requiring strictly numerical assessments to get a satisfactory CRA rating; using federal home-loan data broken down by neighborhood, income group, and race; encouraging community groups to complain when banks were not loaning enough to specified neighborhood, income group, and race; allowing community groups that marketed loans to targeted groups to collect a fee from the banks.”

An interesting ,editorial by Terry Jones on Investor’s Business Daily sheds some more light on this:

“We have to use every means at our disposal to end discrimination and to end it as quickly as possible,” Clinton’s comptroller of the currency, Eugene Ludwig, told the Senate Banking Committee in 1993.

Wall Street eagerly sold the new mortgage-backed securities. Not only were they pooled investments, mixing good and bad, but they were backed with the implicit guarantee of government.

I think this should satisfy your demand for evidence.

You are being extraordinarily obtuse with regard to the ultimate origin of the banking debacle.

It is interesting that your mind goes immediately to the Democrats — I never mentioned any political parties. It is, of course, foolish to think that a scandal of this proportion will not have the fingerprints of members of both parties on it. Still, you are right — the demand that banks lend more to minorities is a Democrat rather than a Republican type move.

You are being very stupid, however, in insisting that any blame must rest only with the current Democratic Congress. While it is true that “the Dems have only controlled Congress for 21 months,” it is also true that prior to January 1995 the Dems controlled the House of Reps for 4 decades! During this time there were many years when they also controlled the Senate. So the Dems have had plenty of time to interfer with the lending market.

In 1977 a Democratic Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act which was signed into law by President Carter.

According to the FFIEC, the act “is intended to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods … The CRA requires that each insured depository institution’s record in helping meet the credit needs of its entire community be evaluated periodically. That record is taken into account in considering an institution’s application for deposit facilities, including mergers and acquisitions.”

In 1999, then president Bill Clinton instructed the Fannie Mae Corporation to ease credit requirements on loans to ethnic minorities and low-income earners. In this nationwide scheme, the pilot program alone involved 24 banks. This was to include what became known as the sub-prime sector. Fannie Mae’s chairman and chief executive in 1999 said that in addition to “reducing down payment requirements” the corporation would underwrite loans in the sub-prime market.

Of course, the sub-prime lending market was not limited to Fannie May or Freddie Mac. All the troubled financial institutions are troubled because of their involvement.

It was these sub-prime loans, often lent to unqualified candidates for no money down, which – along with middle-class housing spectulation – brought about the crisis. And as these minority borrowers were primarily black and Hispanic, it is indeed ironic that WaMu’s last words would be self-congratulatory about their standing in the Hispanic community.

But as for gay folks? We certainly didn’t get any breaks from Fannie May or any of the other lenders.

So I can recognize Krikorian’s amusement to some extent. But as gay folks receive LESS consideration in housing acquisition, it is purely insult to even insinuate that HRC approval was remotely associated with their failure.

ADENDUM: This is not in any way to blame the current crisis on Hispanics, blacks, or any other minority group. Heck, if someone is going to make you a loan for nothing down and promise you that by the time your interest increase hits your house will be worth double thus giving you free money, well it’s hard to blame someone for jumping at that opportunity.

The blame, in my opinion, is on those who sought to use the power of the government to force the market to behave in a manner that was contrary to market principles.

You are, I think, taking Krikorian’s post far more seriously than intended by its author.

I’m sure that Krikorian knows that companies have publicity departments that release these things. (Such departments do, however, answer to the management.)

Krikorian is poking fun at the political correctness displayed in the press release. A man should be able to do so without being accused of placing blame on the object of the political correctness (which in this case was hispanics and homosexuals).

You should note I wrote: “WaMu’s managers seemed to be more interested in political correctness than in the health of their business.” I never implied this was really the foremost concern in their minds during their last days as an independent business, or that Krikorian actually thought so.

Even if Krikorian definitely stated that WaMu’s treatment of hispanic and gay loan applicants was the sole or major cause of its failure he wouldn’t be blaming gays or hispanics as groups. He would be placing the blame on WaMu itself.

“Of course, instead of actually reading what he wrote and why he wrote it, anything can be explained away…”

Just what the hell is this supposed to mean? That I never actually read Krikorian’s post when I quite obviously did? And just how does one read the why of something being written unless the author explicitly states his reasons in the piece?

If you want this site to be about “evaluat[ing] anti-gay claims against their evidence,” you can’t read anti-gay prejudice into things which don’t contain any.

Assertions of fact require substantiation. And so as per our comments policy, let me ask again:

Speaking of evaluating evidence, Congress “demand[ed] that banks make loans more available to minority applicants regardless of finances”??? When? Which Congress?

No. But where did all the subprime mortgages that were bundled come from?

The root of the problem is Congressional interference in the lending market. To state this is not to let the lenders of the hook, but only to call Congress to account for its own foolish actions.