Steaming - Democratic Underground

McCamy Taylor

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Wed Oct-01-08 08:06 AM
Original message

Steaming

Even though I knew that the Republicans would blame the mortgage crisis on its victims, I am steaming.

Even though I knew that they would try to divide the working class along racial lines, so that we would not notice that the richest 2% of Americans have screwed us all without regard to faith, creed or color, I am hopping mad.

People who have no home, no job, no hope for a better tomorrow can not defend themselves when the rich and powerful level the vicious attacks that people like Congresswoman Michelle Bachman have made. You are good enough to clean our floors, but we don’t want you in our neighborhoods. We only offered you a mortgage, because Clinton made us. But the joke was on you. We made sure that it was a mortgage that you could never pay

Mortgage brokers seek to excuse themselves using the rapist’s defense. Adjustable rate mortgages were legal, and I had the minorities over a barrel since no one else would lend to them. I would have been a fool not to do what was best for my company So what if we eventually had to foreclose. It was a sellers market back then.

The Republicans who are desperate to see John McCain elected president would roast babies on a spit if they thought it would help them win the state of Ohio, so you know that they did not even hesitate before they launched their campaign to make America Blame the Blacks. “Well, you see, them coloreds, they decided they was tired of spittin’ watermelon seeds from a rental porch, so they figured they’d get they own porch. They can’t read too good, though. No matter. They moved in with they kids and they grankids an’ then junior busted up a joint and they needed the mortgage money for bail so they lost the house. Thas how it go. No account. Bringin’ the neighborhood down….Me? No, actually, I was born in San Diego and I went to school in Phoenix. They told me to talk like this at John McCain headquarters----“

All of this is divide and conquer politics as usual in the not so United States of America, and it has me angry. But what has me really steaming is what happened to get us into this mess. It is a nasty tale, straight out of Faulkner, one of those Snopes stories of unbridled greed.

During the Clinton administration, a teeny tiny bit of progress was made undoing some of the terrible damage that Reagan-Bush did to the middle class. Working Americans began to see a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel. And for the first time, some of that prosperity extended to Blacks and Latinos. The American Dream became the all inclusive thing it was always meant to be.

The economy prospered, the way it does when middle America has confidence and money to spend and good health so that it can work productively. There was still profound wealth disparity, but we had taken a turn for the better, despite the worst efforts of Newt Gingrich and his reactionary Congress.

But then a conspiracy of Very Rich People stole the presidential election in 2000, and the executive branch allowed American business to do whatever it wanted for seven years. America returned to the days of monopolies and Robber Barons. In particular, the Bush administration protected the banking and mortgage industry from all interference, even from state regulators and state attorney generals who tried to protect investors and home buyers. Bush aided the mortgage industry by perverting a Civil War law so that he could claim that only the feds could regulate banks. And then he ordered his people to stop all regulation----including their duty to keep track of discriminatory lending practices.

When lenders were free of all regulations, they began to follow their own dark impulses. Greed took over. And prejudice. They knew that if they ripped off too many white folks, the members of the president’s own party, the Republicans would rise up in arms. However, Blacks and Latinos were mostly Democrats and mostly ignored by the mainstream media. So, when they came asking for a home loan, even if they qualified for a low rate, fixed interest conventional loan, they were offered only an adjustable rate mortgage, one that they would never be able to pay off. That way the banks could collect “rent”---and eventually either charge a hefty refinancing fee or repossess the home and collect another fee when they sold it again at a higher price. Back then housing markets were on a steady rise.

Borrowers who asked questions about these loans would be reassured. Refinancing will be a cakewalk. No more difficult than getting this loan. Everybody is doing this now. This was fraud, but who was going to call them on it? The Bush administration that had enabled the scam in the first place?

If someone can tell me how this is different from the old practice of "redlining" which forced minorities to waste their money on rent with nothing to show for it, please let me know. As far as I can tell, all this new system accomplished is it destroyed people's credit history and cost them more as they tried desperately to keep up with ballooning payments.

As far back as 2003, state attorney generals were onto this mortgage industry racket---which means that the Bush administration knew what was going on, too. Why did the Bush SEC and DOJ look the other way with so many people trapped into contracts with escalating payments? Surely they could see that this was the same market strategy as the drug pusher, who sells cheap until you are addicted. Hmmm. You know, if you think about it, the predatory lending racket was exactly the same as Bush Sr.’s “War on Drugs” aka "Contra-Cocaine". Both were criminal conspiracies between government and business against America’s minorities, designed to steal their savings, enrich a few whites and make Blacks and Latinos out to be “dangerous” to the country. And in both cases, Republicans have sought to score political points by portraying the victims as irresponsible, selfish, un-American---and Black, even though whites used drugs and whites have been victims of the mortgage crisis, too.

Well, what about the drug lords/predatory lenders? What about their greed, their selfishness, their irresponsibility? Who bears the moral responsibility? The man who wanted to provide a home for his family or the man who wanted to steal the bread from the mouths of that man’s family?Wanting to provide for your family is an American value. Wanting to keep your neighbor from providing for his family is about as un-American as you can get.

And that is why I am steaming.