So you're saying Dodd-Frank had absolutely nothing to do with it? I beg to differ, it had everything to do with it,
This is the problem, right here. The idea that the blame is an all or nothing proposition when it comes to a particular scapegoat.
Not only that, but Dodd-Frank was not even around before the crisis started! It was passed as a RESULT of the crisis.
Now if you are talking about the
people, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, of course they share
some of the blame. They very effectively blocked legislation to reduce the GSEs portfolios in 2005, along with a handful of Republicans.
However, the GSEs made up less than half of the sub-prime market. They were following the lead of Wall Street. The GSEs were profit making ventures just like other firms, the only difference being their implicit government safety net. But they were still out there to make a profit.
The GSEs had suffered some corruption problems, and their operations were scaled way back early in the decade. This created a gigantic vaccum which Wall Street rushed in to fill. And Wall Street did not have any government regulations to stop them from throwing the underwritnig laws of the Universe out the window.
By the time the GSEs got back in a big way into the newly supercharged market, the sub-prime bubble was well underway. They were just riding along the wave created by Wall Street. They got caught up in the insanity with everyone else. Then when the Bush Administration tried to reel them in, Dodd and Frank cock-blocked him.
But no one was stopping Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns or Morgan Stanley or JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs. None of them were subject to the regulations the GSEs were. They certainly weren't subject to the CRA. And in fact, the SEC unanimously voted to waive the capital reserves requirements for these five biggest firms, because they were brainwashed by the firms, the same way the ratings agencies were, that these firms had eliminated risk from the financial world with their structured products, when in fact those products had astronomically amplified the risks.
But you see, there are fools who aren't satisfied with that. And they go beyond rationality and begin looking for a way to put the whole crisis onto the backs of negroes. And they set their eyes on the CRA. And it is this ridiculous and obvious racist scapegoat which is flat-out wrong.
They can't see the forest for the trees. They can't see this was a GLOBAL crisis with property bubbles all around the world. They can't see the current European crisis which is the result of the exact same structured financial products that brought us all to the abyss a few years ago. They are stuck on their negro-fixation and this willful blindness prevents them from seeing the whole picture.
And when you can't see the whole picture, you can't properly identify the problem. And if you can't identify the problem, any "solutions" you offer are based on false premises and doomed to failure.
