September 27, 2008

Wow. Poor People Caused the Financial Crisis - Who Knew?



This appears to be the latest meme being pushed by Republicans to essentially deflect blame for the crisis from themselves as the party in power and onto someone else's back, namely the poor. Its emerged in the last day or so as a video blaming the crisis on CRA and the Democrats is circulating across the internet.

This is the kind of crap I find despicable, essentially pushing an idea that welching poor people are the cause of the crisis. By using the labeling of "poor people", it permits a sort of lazy stereotyping to provide easy scapegoats. Under this political argument scheme, homebuyers become a new brand of welfare recipients which the government forced big, Wall Street banks into lending to.

Its an overstatement of the role of CRA, an understatement of Wall Streets culpability in creating exotic credit default swaps and derivatives and other opaque and unregulated financial instruments, and a stereotyping and scapegoating of regular people doing one of the most American things we do; buying a home to raise a family and become investors in the American way of life.