WSJ is still pimping "ACORN caused the financial meltdown"

[struggle4progress]

* NOVEMBER 12, 2009, 7:10 P.M. ET
Acorn and the Housing Bubble
The liberal pressure group helped Congress write the affordable housing rules that got us into trouble.
By EDWARD PINTO
All agree that the bursting of the housing bubble caused the financial collapse of 2008 ... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703298004574459763052141456.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

I'm guessing this means the financial elite are still worried financial regulation might be on the way

[Jack Rabbit]

1. Does anybody now doubt it's a Murdoch paper?

I didn't think so.

[Toucano]

2. They're simply liars. n-t

[emulatorloo]

6. Or insane. Or both, I guess n/t

[bobbolink]

3. Because blaming poor people works.

It doesn't fail with "progressives", either.

[struggle4progress]

7. Yep: demonizing the victims is the name of the game

[bobbolink]

9. Who is going to stop the game?

:shrug:

[struggle4progress]

15. I'd assume they're going after ACORN because ACORN has a successful organizing model -- so if we

want to fight back, that's one proven approach

[bobbolink]

17. The point is... all I'm hearing is the typical lamenting... NO action.

I was asking WHO is going to do the "fighting".

Poverty just isn't sexy to "progressives".

[OHdem10]

4. Wow, Acorn should be proud to know they are so powerful.

De-regulations including REPEAL of Glass-Steagall were far
more responsible. No or little regulation, giving Banks the
ability to use Taxpayer money to fix their Gambling addiction.
And the gambling brought the house down.

[Hippo_Tron]

5. Wow, I didn't know TEH MAGICAL ACORNZ was so powerful

We should use them more often.

[benld74]

8. Ez becuz hte majical Acurns pulled their WSJ single page ads, thatz wuy!

[Blue_Tires]

10. wow...people were not believing that back when it was a fresh talking point...

but i'd expect nothing less from the crony-capitalist WSJ...

[Telly Savalas]

11. If the WSJ is right, then clearly the Republican party can't be trusted to govern

If the GOP dominated government from 2001-2006 couldn't do anything to stop a few community organizers from completely destroying our country, should we really give them back the reigns of power?

[notesdev]

12. One man's affordable housing

is the next man's subprime MBS fiasco.

ACORN is not even close to innocent - if you make a major part of your business agitating for loans to people who normally couldn't get them due to lack of creditworthiness, after they blow up spectacularly it's disingenuous to cry ignorance.

Those of us who are not knee-jerk political partisans and actually look at the underlying root causes of these things know this is the truth.

[TheKentuckian]

13. Small potatoes. If you can't see the big hit came straight from the casino then you have to be blind

and then you still have to ignore the obvious issue of why the fuck would they be loaning people amounts they know full well they can't pay.

You'd have to also let it slip by that more money got jacked up than all the mortgages in the country are worth combined. The hole is trillions, the TARP everyone goes on and on about is fucking nothing but the tip of the iceberg, there is no way the defaults could possibly account for the crater in the economy.

How can you even give passing thought to the people that actually had consequences like losing their homes when some folks are getting billions for screwing the pooch and losing trillions of dollars into thin air?

Plus, at some point somebody should admit that probably almost all the people who got foreclosed on may well have made it just fine under something resembling reasonable terms.

[notesdev]

14. You hit on the key question

"why the fuck would they be loaning people amounts they know full well they can't pay"

The answer: by doing so they could earn outsized short-term profits (higher rates on less creditworthy borrowers), with their losses eaten by taxpayers - exactly what we have seen happen. Fraud can be amazingly profitable, until you get caught! And since nobody is prosecuting, even getting caught isn't a big deal anymore.

On mortgage valuations, check your numbers. The hole is trillions yes, but the amounts we're talking about in U.S. mortgages are many trillions. And a good reason why the hole is as large as it is, is that the policy decisions by the government and the Fed have made the problem significantly worse. This hole can't be filled by any amount of money as long as banksters and their friends are shoveling the dough into their private accounts.

What you have to realize is that for many of the low end borrowers, there really were no reasonable terms under which to lend them money. If the creditworthiness is bad enough, rates have to be usurious in order to sustain lending to them. People need to understand that home ownership is not a right, and it is not the right thing for a lot of people.

While we're at it, keep in mind that a lot of these foreclosed - the bulk - are people who bought more than they could afford and have no right to keep what is not rightfully theirs. They certainly have no right to demand the taxes of a non-owner be spent so that they can increase their private wealth! Then there is the systematic fraud that has yet to be unraveled, where borrowers and lenders both knew the contracts they were signing could never be made good, and often deliberately moved to alter data to make those contracts possible.

[Cosmocat]

18. WRONG ...

They are simply doing a cut and paste - inserting ACORN where they have tried desperately to peg Fannie Mae, and people are spot on in that is race/lower income baiting ...

I have talked to people in the loan industry, and most definitely it was about giving loans to people who could not make them 1) People who were allowed to overbuy houses, getting $400,000 houses when they should have been in the $200,000 range for example 2) People who were getting into second. third homes, either for quick flips, long term investments or just to have second homes ...

Sorry, even a superficial level of thought shows that whatever defaults might have occured with "lower income" folks are houses in the $75,000 to $150,000 ish range at worst ... It takes two or three or four of those to have the same impact as those who primarily were getting into trouble ...

[Blue_Tires]

16. ttt