boutons_deux
09-04-2010, 08:39 AM
While the subprime loans were flowing, communities of color had access to a seemingly endless amount of funding. In 1990, one million refinance loans were issued. It was the same for home improvement and refinance loans. By 2003, 15 million refinance loans were issued. That directly contributed to billions in loss equity, especially among minority and elderly homeowners. Also at the same time, banks developed “emerging markets” divisions that specifically targeted under-served communities of color. In 2003, subprime loans were more prevalent among blacks in 98.5 percent of metropolitan areas, according to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.
One former Wells Fargo loan officer testifying in a lawsuit filed by the city of Baltimore against the bank says fellow employers routinely referred to subprime loans as “ghetto loans” and black people as “mud people.” He says he was reprimanded for not pushing higher priced loans to black borrowers who qualified for prime or cheaper loans. Another loan officer, Beth Jacobson, says the black community was seen “as fertile ground for subprime mortgages, as working-class blacks were hungry to be a part of the nation’s home-owning mania.”
“We just went right after them,” Jacobson said, according to the New York Times, adding that the black church was frequently targeted as the bank believed church leaders could convince their congregations to take out loans. There are numerous reports throughout the nation of black church leaders being paid incentives for drumming up business.
Due in part to these aggressive marketing techniques and ballooning emerging market divisions, subprime mortgage activity grew an average of 25 percent per year from 1994 to 2003, drastically outpacing the growth for prime mortgages. In 2003, subprime loans made up 9 percent of all U.S. mortgages, about a $330 billion business; up from $35 billion a decade earlier.
Now that the subprime market has imploded, banks have all but abandoned those communities. Prime lending in communities of color has decreased 60 percent while prime lending in white areas has fallen 28.4 percent.
Due entirely to subprime loans, black borrowers are expected to lose between $71 billion and $92 billion.
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/148068
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The Big Repug/Conservative Lie is the (Dems/socialist/hated) CRA, by some miraculous power now evaporated, "forced" the lenders to make sup-prime loans.
For some mysterious reason, those same (predatory) lenders cannot be "forced" to modify those loans to allow people to keep their homes.
As always, the Repug Big Lie is smokescreen for the crimes by Repug financiers. Like Repugs blaming the entire planet's woes on govt, when in fact the perps are corporations that pay the govt piper that plays the perps' tunes.
One former Wells Fargo loan officer testifying in a lawsuit filed by the city of Baltimore against the bank says fellow employers routinely referred to subprime loans as “ghetto loans” and black people as “mud people.” He says he was reprimanded for not pushing higher priced loans to black borrowers who qualified for prime or cheaper loans. Another loan officer, Beth Jacobson, says the black community was seen “as fertile ground for subprime mortgages, as working-class blacks were hungry to be a part of the nation’s home-owning mania.”
“We just went right after them,” Jacobson said, according to the New York Times, adding that the black church was frequently targeted as the bank believed church leaders could convince their congregations to take out loans. There are numerous reports throughout the nation of black church leaders being paid incentives for drumming up business.
Due in part to these aggressive marketing techniques and ballooning emerging market divisions, subprime mortgage activity grew an average of 25 percent per year from 1994 to 2003, drastically outpacing the growth for prime mortgages. In 2003, subprime loans made up 9 percent of all U.S. mortgages, about a $330 billion business; up from $35 billion a decade earlier.
Now that the subprime market has imploded, banks have all but abandoned those communities. Prime lending in communities of color has decreased 60 percent while prime lending in white areas has fallen 28.4 percent.
Due entirely to subprime loans, black borrowers are expected to lose between $71 billion and $92 billion.
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/148068
==========
The Big Repug/Conservative Lie is the (Dems/socialist/hated) CRA, by some miraculous power now evaporated, "forced" the lenders to make sup-prime loans.
For some mysterious reason, those same (predatory) lenders cannot be "forced" to modify those loans to allow people to keep their homes.
As always, the Repug Big Lie is smokescreen for the crimes by Repug financiers. Like Repugs blaming the entire planet's woes on govt, when in fact the perps are corporations that pay the govt piper that plays the perps' tunes.