Dem's shortcut to closing wealth gap backfired

Feds' Dem's shortcut to closing wealth gap backfired on minority homeowners

"Did you see the devastating numbers about the wealth of minority families? Their savings have largely been wiped out. White households now have 20 times more wealth than black households and 18 times more wealth than Hispanic households."

“ There are various reasons. But a big one is this: The federal government turned home ownership into an affirmative-action program, complete with quotas. And a lot of people who had no business buying houses bought them and then lost them. "As sad as it is to say, this began in the Clinton Administration as a response to the argument that the poor and minorities couldn't get credit and were being left out of the home-ownership dream," says James Wright, a sociology professor at University of Central Florida. "They couldn't meet credit requirements. There was a lot of pressure in progressive circles" to change those requirements.  [Full] Holy Crap! Orlando Sentinal columnist Mike Thomas comes closeer to articulating the truth about this as I've seen in print.  “ To further this goal, Fannie Mae agreed to buy high-risk subprime loans in 1999. This meant lenders could sell the loans to unqualified buyers and then dump them on Fannie and the taxpayers. The Department of Housing and Urban Development set a goal that, by 2001, half the portfolios of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae should be composed of loans to low-income and moderate-income buyers. Once Freddie and Fannie were fully engaged in the subprime business, the market went crazy. Lenders enticed unqualified and unsophisticated borrowers into signing loans they couldn't possibly pay off. ” I'll take small victories where I can find them.