Not exactly a group of flaming radicals. My sense is that conservative pundits have have evaded the obvious Bush /republican party / Greenspan responsibility for the crash blaming it on greedy housing bubble queens as Dems have evaded the Rubin/ Clinton connection blaming it on greedy republicans. What is sure is that greed, and not a pursuit of greater justice or equity for the poor has bankrupted the banks. The recommendations for reform in this article are modest and reasonable and in my view understate the need for reform.

Also, Voldemort and E77 don't answer Pastor Jeff's explanation of pie growth. Which seems to me more of an explanation of who ate the pie and why.
I personally have never seen a pie grow. Pies in my experience diminish according to quality and appetite. Right now it is bye bye miss, Mrs and Mr American Pie, Drove my Chevy and Ford and Chrysler to the levy and the levy was dry. Them good old war profiteers were drinking blood and getting high an now its time for everyone to cry.

Where was conservative outrage while the bankers and war profiteers looted the country and the neocons murdered hundreds of thousands and initiated nation wide unwarranted spying? Instead they reserve their outrage for attempts to improve education, health and opportunity for those hurting the most. On this blog they argue for Ron Paul's ideas and vote for Bush, Cheney McCain etc.

It is astonishing to see the lengths that people will go to turn a criticism of a poorly designed law and regulations into “brazenly blaming the poor”.

Congress passed CRA. Congress itself is composed primarily of wealthy individuals.

Regulators then issued rules based on CRA. Since these regulators are mainly professionals — lawyers, economists, etc., there were very few poor people involved in this process as well.

To the extent that poor people were involved, it was largely on the periphery. I hate to burst your bubble about this, but the vast majority of Congressional districts are not competitive. And poor people do not lobby much. Oh, some interest group may have a poor individual give testimony or do news interviews, but that poor individual was almost certainly chosen for his or her adherence to the philosophy of the lobbying group, and coached in advance on precisely what to say.

The bottom line is that politics is overwhelmingly a game for the middle-class and up, and that goes for both parties. In a society where most of the population is in the lower middle class or better, there's no getting around that.

(On the whole that's a good problem to have — the only way that the poor will ever drive politics is through numbers, and if the majority of your population is poor, by definition you have a poor society.)

As far as just what went wrong with CRA, because of inadequate or non-existent means tests, CRA was indirectly responsible for ill-considered loans to middle-class borrowers who used the funds to “flip” houses, in essence engaging in real-estate speculation. As I understand it, the CRA's effects on real estate speculation, and the inevitable real estate “bubble”, did more damage than loans to poor families.

So even if you want to go beyond Congress and the regulatory agencies, the blame falls mostly on people who are middle-class or better. And I think if you read what most conservatives are writing, you'll see they are aware of the distinction.

Right now the left, which by-and-large supported CRA, is trying to equate criticism of CRA with blaming the poor. At this point, they aren't helping the poor in this as much as they are using the poor as a shield to cut off examination of their handiwork. We just can't let them get away with that.

LV

To be precise, Ms Palmberg asserted that conservative pundits were “brazenly trying to blame the poor for the mortgage meltdown by targeting the Community Reinvestment Act.” She did not assert pundits were brazenly blaming the poor directly; but that the focus on the CRA was a veiled 'blaming of the poor.'

Your assertion that the focus of the critique is on Congress and the CRA is consistent with what she wrote. You both agree the critique is focused on Congress' CRA.

You disagree in that she sees pundits framing the CRA so as to associate with poor persons. Therefore, if the financial meltdown was caused by the CRA–it has a close connection to poor persons.

So do pundits make this between the CRA and poor persons?

The few quotes I gave you connected the following persons to the CRA:

1. welfare recipients
2. bad-credit customers with “dog-food” wages
3. (those on) welfare rolls … hasten(ing) the collapse of American capitalism
4. people with poor job histories
5. people with marginal credit
6. people with inadequate incomes
7. these people are largely minorities
8. minority borrowers who do not meet the normal criteria

And just for clarity sake, are you saying, as you hear the conservative punditry class, that you do not hear the following argument being made???

Democrats are kept in power by a web of special interests whose votes they have purchased with social programs that make these seem constituents forever dependent on government. ACORN is a perfect example of duplicitous and predatory and corrupt behavior that connects the votes of poor people for Democratic candidates to obtaining special benefit from government for poor people. And there is no better example of this corruption than poor people organized through ACORN putting the screws to banks and public officials to use the CRA to illegitimately put bad loans into poor communities.

Essentially, the housing stock is owned by banks, etc; through which they lay claim to 25%-40% of all our income. By agressive lending, they can manufacture an increase in housing values, making the borrowers think they are actually building some equity before they sell and take on another 30-year mortgage. They don't want you to afford the house–just enough to pay them enough so they can make a profit on their money.

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_092...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpJP9e_FuEs

http://www.dailymarkets.com/economy/2008/10/12/...

http://www.propeller.com/story/2008/09/29/racis...