Wednesday, September 24, 2008

These Bastards Are Crafty

Man, I was watching cable news the other night and I swear I wrote at least three blogs in my head.

As I learned more and more about the potential bailout and the maneuvering by the Bush administration to turn this disaster into a boon for their cronies, I just started fuming. But, my anger went to a whole new level when Pat Buchanan hit the screen.

Earlier in the day, I'd heard that conservatives had come up with their strategy to deflect blame for the crisis away from their deregulation ideals, and towards a familiar target. Pat confirmed all the rumors.

They're blaming the niggers.

It really shouldn't have been surprising that conservatives blamed "minorities" for the financial crisis, but I must admit that I didn't see it coming. I thought they were going to have to take the hit, and maybe divert some of the blame to Democrats who also favored deregulation. Instead, these slick suckers managed to flip the script and say that the only reason banks collapsed was because they were forced to make loans to minorities who didn't deserve them. It's the Affirmative Action defense with a financial twist!

I told y'all they were crafty.

Of course this new talking point is being repeated by every Conservative given air time, it's being beaten into the ground at Fox News and pretty soon it will be accepted as fact by most Republicans. One thing about conservatives is that they stay on message and they know how to get their message to the masses.

Too bad the message is built on lies.

Sure, sub-prime mortgages were a huge factor in the banking collapse and those loans were held disproportionately by minorities. But, that's not the fault of federal guidelines about discriminatory lending. The federal standards were enacted not to encourage banks to give loans to minorities who didn't qualify, but so that they would give loans to qualified minority applicants. Bankers had a bad habit of denying minorities loans while at the same time granting loans to white people with the exact same qualifications. They also had a tendency to offer minorities higher interest rates than white applicants.

Instead of correcting their discrimination, banks decided that the best solution was to create a new standard for lending that would justify them charging ridiculous interest rates. These relaxed standards allowed them to make sub-prime loans, but they also allowed them to give white applicants way more money than was justified. Shoot, one of the key components to the housing collapse in California was that banks were giving something called "good faith" loans where applicants for a mortgage self-reported their income, and the bank did nothing to verify those figures.

Now do y'all think black folks were getting "good faith" loans?

I don't think so.

Anyway, the conservative talking points are easily countered if you have a basic understanding of the banking crisis and a willingness to challenge popular assumptions about Affirmative Action. Unfortunately, most reporters do not have both. I saw Rachel Maddow go after Buchanan, but she didn't use the same angle I just did. She just pointed out that the core problem is still deregulation, which meant that the convo basically turned into a shouting match between she and Pat. She didn't see that he was fundamentally misrepresenting what caused CEOs to loan money to minorities. It wasn't liberalism, it was greed tinged with racism.

Anyway, I just wanted to arm ya'll in case you run across a conservative trying to advance this hogwash all while encouraging us to give Henry Paulson and George Bush a blank check to fix the problem. Don't let them fool you.

They may be crafty, but when your house is built on lies, it cannot stand for long.

12 comments:

Kevin Allman said...

I heard this twice in the last 24 hours -- once on Fox News (clip on The Daily Show), and the other on one of New Orleans' fine AM radio stations this morning.

Someone finally called in and said that he drove around the city for his job, and that most of the foreclosure signs he saw were on McMansion estates in brand-new tracts. "You telling me that those are all poor black folks buying those up?" he said, laughing. (He was white.)

The host went on to another topic.

Imhotep said...

Big man ain't that some chit! We get blamed for everything bad and no credit for anything good, it's quite obvious that the devil is doing the judging.

The republicans are a lying hateful sack of shit. How the hell is 10% of the population, the least affluent 10%, is going to bring down the financial empire?

All these banks and brokerage houses employ finacial strategist, and PhD economist, they can forcast risk out 20 years, they knew this chit was going to collaspe. They knew the degree of risk that was involved with those loans, but they also knew that they could securitize those loans and sell them to foreign investors and make big profits.

We ALL know that banks don't make loans to Black folks because the like us. They make loans to us and everyone else because they stand to make a profit. And they evaluate risk before they dispurse funds. If they were giving away loans to Black folks, why don't every Black person own a home?

The republicans like to talk about personal responsibility, but these lying cowards will not accept that they were motivated by avarice! These lying cowards are not talking about their billion $$ profits, and Mil $$ bonuses, instead they are blaming the least among us for bringing down the financial juggernaut. WTF!

I lived in Cali during the height of the mortgage frenzy, and I know for a fact that a person could buy a $1 mill home with with only $2500out of pocket. That's because the banks made it possible and it was white folks buying those homes.

I wish pat buchanan would die a slow, painful, horrible death. It cannot happen soon enough!

Anonymous said...

Well, in spite of their efforts to shift the blame, there's nothing like an October Surprise in September. Rick Davis apparently has been on Freddie Mac's payroll up until last month--when the feds took over. I'm waiting to see how McCain is going to spin his claim that Davis has had nothing to do with FM since 2005.

Newsweek and the NY Times broke the story.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/160561/output/print

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/us/politics/w24davis.html?_r=2&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

Big Man said...

McCain already handled the Davis thing. He blamed the media for being in the tank for Obama and then refused to discuss it.

Anyway, I'm heartened to see Congress standing up to Bush and Paulson on this bailout thing. I'm going to write something for tomorrow on a solution that I think hasn't been given enough play.

OG, The Original Glamazon said...

Wow! I am utterly speechless. Sorry I can't have more intelligent conversation about such an unintelligent talking point.

-OG

Anonymous said...

I'm so angry about all this I can't even find words to express it, so I'm just trying to ignore it and do my own thing.

About the right wing scum bag spin, that's just nuts! See, I guess the reason you don't see much anger on behalf of black Americans from me is because I don't bother with any cable news or any AM radio. I watch the Newshour on PBS every night and listen to NPR during my commute so I miss all that crap. It's poisonous to the mind. I understand why folks follow it though, to "know thy enemy." I can't take it, it just drives me crazy, I can't! It scares me how many people watch Faux News, though. And all these people vote too.

Man we need to win this election. I'm in California so it doesn't matter here.

Anonymous said...

Blame them for the housing crash...and yet continue to court them to spend all their disposable income malt liquor and big cars and other shit like that...ain't that a crock of hyprocritical bullshit.

Not new bullshit of course, but it still smells pretty rank.

Anonymous said...

Well, I guess McCain needs a water break. Suspending his campaign because Washington needs him? Yeah, right...but not an unintelligent move.

Anonymous said...

"Crafty" is hardly the word to describe it. I'd say loathsome and despicable. But that's hardly news.

I have to second your suspicion of the Administration's bailout proposal, too. In the past couple of days Berkshire Hathaway's investment in Goldman Sachs and the purchase of some Morgan Stanley assets by Japanese banks show that there is a way out of this mess that doesn't require another staggering hit to US taxpayers: Let the overleveraged entities fail.

The problem with these companies is that they are not viable as they stand, and fixing them is an enormously expensive proposition. But the reasons they are not viable are precisely the ones that argue against propping them up with (borrowed) tax dollars: By allowing their companies to succumb to the siren song of speculative frenzy their management has proved themselves to be reckless and incompetent. The government's efforts at damage control ought to be limited to saving otherwise viable institutions that are threatened by spreading panic. This is not only cheaper but far more morally defensible.

Anonymous said...

Now what channel did you see this on?

I just watched the PJB clip on Youtube of Pat on Rachel Maddow's show and I didn't hear him say anything about it.

Big Man said...

Uppity, you didn't hear Buchanan mention liberalism and minorities on Maddow's show? I watched it the other night.

Big Man said...

Here's a link that backs up my theory that this is the new right wing talking point to deflect blame to their favorite targets.

http://www.slate.com/id/2201641/pagenum/all/#page_start




Raving Black Lunatic