1. CRA applies to insured (FDIC) institutions and not mortgage companies, which are predominantly responsible for subprime originations. Insured commercial banks may have originated subprime loans, but they are heavily regulated, subject to continuous oversight to ensure compliance with consumer protection laws, and ensure safe and sound management.

2. CRA specifies that banks are to invest (make home and small business loans, buy community development investment instruments, and provide reasonable bank services and products) to low-and moderate-income residents in their designated communities. The premise is that banks that collect deposits from communities and should invest part of them funds back into the community. The anti-discrimination provision comes into play only because a bank that discriminates on the basis of race, national origin AND gender, marital status, age, etc., logically is not doing a good job of investing back in the community.

3. CRA specifically states that banks should only do so within the standards of safe and sound practices. Any bank that made obviously risky, questionable loans would not only get in trouble with its shareholders, but have to answer to its regulator.

4. As public CRA evaluations demonstrate, banks all across this country have remarkable records of meeting their CRA obligations, and they have found that these are profitable ventures.

5. The primary culprits of the current subprime meltdown are RE loan flippers and mcmansion buyers.

Now Barnie Frank and Chris Dodd, the Baloney twins, want to bail out their chronies on Wall St. …listen to them sing like the yellow canaries they are about needing the money asap. Yeah, right, and an amnesty provision also in the bill so their campaign bribers won’t go to jail and take Frank with them!!! Wake up America, it’s your money not Frank’s , not Bush’s and certainly not Wall STreets..unless, you want to bend over for them and show you are masochistic as well as ignorant.

Barack Obama advisor Jim Johnson quits under fire:
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/12/nation/na-johnson12

Minorities can have anything they want when they work hard for it and deserve it like everybody else. I’m a young hispanic making your average salary and just bought my first home and living comfortably and affordably. Quit being a victim. We’re better than that.

Bottom line: Minorities can’t have anything nice.

I work for a homebuilder, and there was a Colombian guy (which I am as well) who was giving people money to use their Social Sec. # and buying 500k villas with false or little documentation on their behalf. As you might imagine, they weren’t able to flip them fast enough and most of them went into foreclosure and the guy was arrested for identity theft, fraud, etc.

2 of my bosses bought 2 and 3 investment properties and have either foreclosed them or are struggling to keep them rented. There are alot of investors foreclosing because they either couldn’t actually afford to hold that many properties or have lost so much in property value they’ll never make back their money on that investment and walking away.

The relaxed restrictions on mortgages implemented by the Clinton Administration (NYTimes article 1999) basically brought us to the edge of socialism in an attempt to create homeownership for anyone and everyone which the banks and public misused. The government, Wall Street, and the real estate industry is now suffering the repercussions of the mess they created.