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In the year
2000, for example, black applicants for conventional mortgage loans
were turned down at twice the rate for white applicants. Case closed,
as far as the media and the government were concerned. Had they
bothered to look a little deeper, they would have found that whites
were turned down at nearly twice the rate for Asian Americans.
Had
they bothered to check out average credit scores, they would have
discovered that whites had higher average credit scores than blacks,
and Asian Americans had higher average credit scores than whites.
Such inconvenient
facts would have undermined the whole moral melodrama, reducing
it to a case of plain economics, with lenders more likely to lend
to those who were more likely to pay them back. Once lending standards
were lowered, in order to meet racial quotas, they were lowered
for everybody. Deadbeats of any race could get mortgage loans, and
most were probably not minorities.
Democrats like
to blame the "greed" of business, rather than the policies of government,
for problems. But lenders don't make money by lending to individuals
who don't pay them back. That is what government forced lenders
to do, beginning under the Clinton administration. And the eventual
collapse took down the economy.
It takes brass
to defy the facts. And Bill Clinton has brass.
In the year
2000, for example, black applicants for conventional mortgage loans
were turned down at twice the rate for white applicants. Case closed,
as far as the media and the government were concerned. Had they
bothered to look a little deeper, they would have found that whites
were turned down at nearly twice the rate for Asian Americans.
Had they bothered to check out average credit scores, they would have
discovered that whites had higher average credit scores than blacks,
and Asian Americans had higher average credit scores than whites.
Such inconvenient
facts would have undermined the whole moral melodrama, reducing
it to a case of plain economics, with lenders more likely to lend
to those who were more likely to pay them back. Once lending standards
were lowered, in order to meet racial quotas, they were lowered
for everybody. Deadbeats of any race could get mortgage loans, and
most were probably not minorities.
Democrats like
to blame the "greed" of business, rather than the policies of government,
for problems. But lenders don't make money by lending to individuals
who don't pay them back. That is what government forced lenders
to do, beginning under the Clinton administration. And the eventual
collapse took down the economy.
It takes brass
to defy the facts. And Bill Clinton has brass.