Neil Munro @ The Daily Caller:
President Barack Obama was a pioneering contributor to the national subprime real estate bubble, and roughly half of the 186 African-American clients in his landmark 1995 mortgage discrimination lawsuit against Citibank have since gone bankrupt or received foreclosure notices.
As few as 19 of those 186 clients still own homes with clean credit ratings, following a decade in which Obama and other progressives pushed banks to provide mortgages to poor African Americans.
The startling failure rate among Obama’s private sector clients was discovered during The Daily Caller’s review of previously unpublished court information from the lawsuit that a young Obama worked on as an attorney for the lead plaintiff.
Since the mortgage bubble burst, some of his former clients are calling for a policy reversal.
“If you see some people don’t make enough money to afford the mortgage, why would you give them a loan?” asked Obama client John Buchanan. “There should be some type of regulation against giving people loans they can’t afford.”
Banks “were too eager to lend to many who didn’t qualify,” said Don Byas, another client who saw banks lurch from caution to bubble-inflating recklessness. [RELATED: Obama’s Citibank plaintiffs hit hard when housing bubble burst]
“I don’t care what race you are. … You need to keep financial wisdom [separate] from trying to help your people,” said Byas, an autoworker.
Nonetheless, Obama has pursued the same top-down mortgage lending policies in the White House.
Blame this on Bush! Thank you Curt for finding this article. None of the liberals will ever admit that their efforts contribute to the sub prime fiasco! It looks like Obama can not lead a recovery, but he contributed to the recession to begin with.
There is ample evidence the housing mess started in the 1990’s. Articles from the NYT and LA times were touting how some minorities who in prior years couldn’t qualify for a home loan were now seeing that change. Like a snowball rolling downhill it starts small and grows, it just takes time. Read this article from the year 2000 for a clue into some of those who saw this coming. Very few at the time were looking for this to happen but some were warning us.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/10_1_the_trillion_dollar.html
Or try this one also from 2000.
http://cei.org/outreach-regulatory-comments-and-testimony/fred-smith-supplemental-remarks
Here’s a crystal ball line if there ever were one from the about article speaking about Fannie and Freddie.
“The management and shareholders keep any profits, but the taxpayer will bear the bailout burden if their policies go sour.”
Sour they went and we got stuck.
Leopards do not change their spots.
Those 186 clients Obama represented lost the homes that banks were forced to bend over backwards to put them in at an 85+% rate!
Only 19 of them still have good credit and their homes….at most.
Obama threw out the baby then forced the banks to drink the dirty bathwater.
I am positive there would have been a better way to find those 19 out of the 186 good risks.
But it would have been color-blind and therefore was not even considered.