Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 05:38:29 -0800 (PST) From: Gilbert Lawrence <gilbert2...@yahoo.com>
To Mervyn: I like your comment, "The cause ... is quite simple: Financial regulations that were in place were either removed or not adhered to." This after just reading and reading that it was too much regulations that caused the debacle, put forward by a Rush Limbaugh talk-alike called Thomas Sowell. Mario responds: Here we see Gilbert, a physician, continue his barrage of jejune personal insults against Prof. Tom Sowell, an eminent economist and expert in financial markets, who is a Fellow at the prestigious Hoover Institute at Stanford University. See, http://www.hoover.org/bios/sowell.html I have already shown in http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2009-February/174166.html, how Gilbert misrepresented the term "dittoheads". The assertion that Prof. Sowell, a respected academic, talks like Mr. Limbaugh, a media commentator and talk show host, is equally specious and backwards. It is Mr. Limbaugh who frequently cites the research based opinions of Prof. Sowell. At Gilbert's request in http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2009-February/174177.html, and to further his education, I have shown below some additional sources of information from credible sources. Gilbert apparently has no idea that there are other financial industry experts who agree with Prof. Sowell's analysis of how the Community Reinvestment Act [CRA], an ultra-liberal piece of legislation passed in the Carter administration, which had good intentions of encouraging home-ownership by low income people, was escalated under the Clinton administration with overt and covert threats by the Justice Department, HUD, Democrat party politicians and community action groups against banks if they were slow to comply with its provisions. Most political liberals and Democrats, and a few Republicans, defended and protected the growing house of cards because it helped low income people, which is what socialism does until it implodes from its fundamental economic flaws. Shown below is an editorial from the respected Investors Business Daily: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=312766781716725 Excerpts: The Community Reinvestment Act is to blame for the financial crisis, but it so powerfully serves Democrats' interests that they'll do anything to protect it — including revising history. The CRA coerces banks into making loans based on political correctness, and little else, to people who can't afford them. Enforced like never before by the Clinton administration, the regulation destroyed credit standards across the mortgage industry, created the subprime market, and caused the housing bubble that has now burst and left us with the worst housing and banking crises since the Great Depression. [end of excerpt] Additional sources are shown below: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:90IT4MK9474J:www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv17n4/vmck4-94.pdf+Justice+Department+under+Clinton+enforces+Community+Reinvestment+Act&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us&client=firefox-a http://www.heritage.org/research/economy/hl516.cfm http://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/obama-sued-citibank-under-cra-to-force-it-to-make-bad-loans/
