Paul Hinderaker of Power Line has brilliantly captured something I’ve been thinking about but hadn’t quite put together like this:
If it turns out to be the financial crisis that puts Barack Obama over the top in his quest for the White House, the irony will be difficult to overstate. First, the biggest driver of the financial crisis was not any conservative policy such as the kind of deregulation John McCain supports. Rather, as Diana West argues, the biggest driver was the “race-based social engineering” that “virtually created the sub-prime mortgage industry.” The implosion of that industry, in turn, triggered the present crisis.The operative vision, then, was leftist and racialist, not free-market. As West puts it, the social engineers decided that not “enough” minorities had homes because not “enough” minorities were eligible for mortgages. The solution was to junk the bottom-line, non-racial markers of mortgage eligibility traditionally used by banks to distinguish between good and bad credit risks—steady employment, clean credit, and a down payment. Obama, then, is the beneficiary of the terrible failure of affirmative action style policies in the mortgage banking sector.But the irony extends further. For it turns out that intimidating banks into making bad loans to minorities was a major activity of “community organizations” during the 1990s. And, according to Stanley Kurtz, Obama himself trained and funded ACORN activists who engaged in such intimidation.Using a combination of intimidation and white guilt to plunge the banking industry into the crisis that brings a radical activist to power—even Saul Alinsky couldn’t have drawn it up this well.
A ridiculous assertion…
http://ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2008094030/firing-back-cra-strikeoutexcuse-diversionstrikeout-libel
Not true at all. Nice try, though; but ignoring facts, comparing apples and oranges, and misrepresenting the issues doesn’t really get you very far.
Don’t worry, Rob. The reason you didn’t put together that the sub-prime collapse was caused by ACORN and evil intimidating affirmative action activists is because it isn’t true. The one true thing in what you quote is that this is not a failure of free market capitalism – it couldn’t be, because free market capitalism doesn’t exist in the United States, or really anywhere else. We thoroughly subsidize both the failures and successes of those who gamble in the financial markets. I’m also really suspicious of any “analysis” that boils down to “the financial collapse was caused by those black people.” But maybe that’s just me.
I also love the term “social engineering”, as if it was some sort of experiment that went awry, and not the foundation of every economy. Of course the bailout isn’t social engineering – tax loopholes for the wealthy isn’t social engineering – corporate subsidies isn’t social engineering – lobbyists aren’t seeking social engineering. Its just “social engineering” when minorities or “leftists” are involved.
So no, Rob, I don’t think you missed anything of *value*; no worries.
Of course, Doug, that’s not what the post said, either . . . 🙂
To clarify that:
1) Nobody’s accusing anybody of being evil. Rather, part of the point here is that this situation arose out of a combination of good motives and bad judgment, not just “greed.”
2) Pure free-market capitalism doesn’t exist anywhere in this world; neither does pure Christianity. I wouldn’t say that this proves that the church doesn’t exist, though.
3) Nobody’s saying the folks who received these mortgages (black or otherwise) are to blame for this crisis. Rather, they’re the victims of a peculiar form of false compassion that’s all too common in this day and age, one that basically holds that telling people what they don’t want to hear is by definition unloving.
4) To the contrary, corporate subsidies most definitely are social engineering. Tax policy is often used for social engineering, in both conservative and liberal directions. I don’t think the rescue bill really qualifies as social engineering, though, if only because it’s too quickly put together and too open-ended; it could well produce a fair bit of social engineering, however.
As for the identification of social engineering with the Left, philosophically, the Left tends to be more prone to it because much more optimistic about the feasibility of the endeavor. Doesn’t make it good or bad, just part of the difference in approach and expectations.