Not long ago, I received a public relations email from the White House bragging about President Barack Obama’s trip to Selma. I too applaud the heroes of Selma who risked so much and fought so hard for the civil rights of African Americans. However, I find the president’s publicity stunt offensive and hypocritical. While the president was pontificating about civil rights, his administration was busy working behind the scenes to shut down the GSEs (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) and give their lucrative mortgage business to his fat-cat friends, the Too-Big-To-Fail Banks on Wall Street.
These are many of the same banks (including Citibank) that at one point in history refused to give mortgages to people of color. More recently (just prior to the 2008 housing market collapse) these big banks, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and J.P. Morgan Chase, targeted blacks and minorities in search of unsuspecting customers for their predatory home loans which resulted in unprecedented rates of foreclosure and helped trigger the Great Recession.
It is time to release the GSEs from the chains of a destructive federal conservatorship and allow them to recapitalize. Then the GSEs will be able to safely pursue their goal of making homeownership more affordable for all Americans. This will go a long way toward protecting the civil rights of those people of color who are searching for their piece of the American Dream. It will also advance the civil rights of GSE shareholders who have had their property rights expropriated by the Treasury’s unconstitutional full-income sweep which forever illegally confiscates the profits of these privately held companies.
Link Neimark
Whitefish