snoot,
Why would you put a bunch of stuff in bold letters and at the same time put a link to a Wiki at the end? I only ask because your longest sentence in bold is not at the Wiki link. In fact, no part of it is at the link. Are you trying to manipulate or be devious?
At the end, I refer to two research reports, produced by a large law firm, and which relates to CRA during the period in question. I suggest you find and download them.
I am also glad that you put the 52% in your post because I have something to say about that at the end. By the way, do you know the difference between setting targets and actual performance?
I've seen that Wiki many times before, and it, like everything else which is a mix of fact and opinion, is not worth quoting from. Especially when you cherry-pick what you personally want to believe from that link.
You have the phrase, "So I'll quote what I feel and the most important points ..."
OK, so you are going to cherry-pick from that Wiki, based on your feelings, as an aid to assemble and express your opinion. No claims anymore, just opinion. That's a small improvement.
My points have always been that you look for things on the internet that make you feel good about your personal opinion(s) then you only use that for your reasoning. You do that by design. That is not how one finds truth.
Do you know what increasingly rigorous requirements really means? If you don't, then you would get everything exactly backwards.
Regarding your 52% .....................................
It's just as easy to find articles on the internet supporting CRA and that it had nothing to do with the housing market breakdown. And they even come with numbers attached. Try this one:
This following information originates from a University of Michigan law professor, Michael Barr, as he testified in February of 2008 before the House Committee on Financial Services:
"50% of subprime loans were made by mortgage service companies not subject to comprehensive federal supervision and another 30% were made by affiliates of banks or thrifts which are not subject to routine supervision or examinations."
Sort of sounds like the CRA was not involved.
A reporter provided the following interpretation:
"Problem is, half of the subprime loans came from mortgage companies with no CRA involvement at all. Another 25%-30% came from companies with very little CRA exposure. For those who left their abacus at home, that's 80% of the loans which were fully or largely outside CRA jurisdiction. More than that, the non-CRA mortgage firms made subprime loans at twice the rate of CRA-covered firms. Which basically leaves a stake in the heart of this particular theory."
Interpretation: the CRA was not at fault.
Both paragraphs claim that 80% were essentially outside of substantive regulation. Yet one of your numbers was 42%, then you upgraded that number to 52%, and that number represented regulated loans created through the CRA.
So we add the two (regulated and un-regulated) to get the total number of loans.
Guess what, that adds up to 132%. Well, somebody's fabricating fiction stories 'cause duh math just don't add up. I'll choose to believe the University of Michigan law professor and the interpretation by the reporter.
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Now let's see what a team of lawyers discovered about the CRA regulations. This team is part of a very large law firm having many offices spread across the country. There is a detailed research report with lots of numbers and charts and definitions and references that you can find and download (I want to see if you can figure out how to do that yourself). Their summary is this:
Our study concludes that CRA Banks were substantially less likely than other lenders to make the kinds of risky home purchase loans that helped fuel the foreclosure crisis.
That report was published on January 7, 2008.
They have another report, equally well constructed and documented, that they wrote and can be found and downloaded. The title is: The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977: Not Guilty
What do you suppose Not Guilty means? That their activities didn't cause the breakdown?
That report was published on January 26, 2009.
That is an equally impressive document. Surely you can find that one and download it.
