Frank Boettcher wrote:
You can't have diligent risk assessment if the government is
threatening you with discrimination charges if you do not give loans
to people who cannot and should not have them.

I never heard of this happening. Maybe it did.

In any event, all the CRA-induced mortgages would sum to only a small
part of the defaults, and mortgage default is only a small part of the
credit crash.
Certainly CRA did not influence any banks to offer 125% financing,
interest-only financing, mortgage 2nd or 3rd homeowners paying 60% of
their comfortable upper-class income to car & credit card payments,
etc etc etc.



*And I'm not saying now nor have I ever said that there were not many
contributing factors and that every individual and entity looked at
the game board and asked themselves "how can I profit from this set of
rules"?

And it shall always be thus. The rules do matter, and enforcement does
matter. FWIW I'd much prefer fewer & simpler rules, with 100%
enforcement. My experience has led me to believe that the more rules
there are in any given game, the more opportunities are created to
cheat.

... *I'm just a big believer in the root cause theory. *Maybe you
are not.


Oh, I believe in root causes. "For want of a nail, the kingdom was
lost."
But it doesn't look to me like a major part of the blame goes on CRA.
Too many other things went in a bad direction concurrently. It looks
like you read my last post, which I appreciate; there's no point in
repeating it. We agree on some things but not everything.... that's
life!

Regards- Doug King