to investigate the role of the Federal government and left-wing groups like ACORN in fomenting the crisis by pressuring lenders to give money away to people who had no obvious means of ever paying it back?

I don't think so ... and certainly not while the Democrats (who are, after all, primarily responsible for the ensuing financial ruin) are in power.

Lenders weren't forced to lend to anyone they didn't want to lend to, or who couldn't pay it back. Period. But since there was no risk due to the securitization process, they saw only an upside. Big mistake.

As to your latter comment, well, the truth will never reach people who refuse to open their eyes.

Do you seriously think ACORN has anything to do with the financial meltdown? Open your eyes- ACORN is one of those beige-metal-desk type non-profit largely staffed by former welfare dependents. They'd be lucky to even get table scraps from the Wall St lenders.

They were forced to demonstrate 'nondiscrimination', which, in practice, means a quota of approved minority applicants. Since some minorities -- in fact, those most dependent upon Government largesse and most likely both to complain if they don't get it and to receive fawning coverage of such complaints in the mainstream media -- are far, far less likely to repay loans than others, this was a recipe for disaster. Which disaster duly occurred.

If you think that the crisis is all about poor people and them getting houses by borrowing money that bankers only gave them because they happened to fear Acorn, you are even dumber than Alicemarie.

Companies like Countrywide were responsible for most of the problem and they were not all that concerned with Acorn. Find anything on the web that would support your view that the brokerages (Like Lehman Bros) were lending to the poor. They weren't. Freddie and Fannie were responsible for a fraction of the foreclosures. Aurora Loan Services and Countrywide brought wall street down. AIG helped by taking money for insurance policies on their investments that AIG could never pay claims on. The rating agencies were rating junk bonds as investment grade because they got paid to do what the brokerages wanted, not what investors needed. That happened because the SEC was run by a Bush appointee who was every bit as competent as our former Fema director....

We should investigate people who helped fill out liar loans and who appraised property at many times it's real worth. Those are the guys at the bottom of it, but they were encouraged by people all the way to the top of the food chain.

Give it a rest. You don't have the faintest idea of what you are taliking about. I saw somewhere on the Net sometime before the election the actual figures on foreclosures of CRA loans.(I don't have the link, but I'm sure if you investigate the CRA web sites you'll be properly schooled.) The percentage is lower than the overall population of total mortgage loans. The largest percentage of foreclosure is in ARMs. It is happening to WORKING people who can't afford the readjusted rates. AND most of them were told they could refinance lower terms in a year - something that never happened when real estate values plummeted.And the next largest segment, (and growing without any changes in unemployment) are fixed rate mortgages where the borrowers have been running zero reserve budgets and lost their jobs. One definition of a racist is anyone who thinks that all of our problems begin and end with minorities, affirmative action, and civil rights laws. You do know that there are more white people on welfare than any other race, don't you?

Quoting from Wikipedia:

"The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 seeks to address discrimination in loans made to individuals and businesses from low and moderate-income neighborhoods.[7] The Act mandates that all banking institutions that receive FDIC insurance be evaluated by Federal banking agencies to determine if the bank offers credit (in a manner consistent with safe and sound operations) in all communities in which the bank takes deposits.[3] The law does not list specific criteria for evaluating the performance of financial institutions. Rather, it directs that the evaluation process should accommodate the situation and context of each individual institution. Federal regulations dictate agency conduct in evaluating a bank's compliance in five performance areas, comprising twelve assessment factors. This examination culminates in a rating and a written report that becomes part of the supervisory record for that bank.[8]

The law, however, emphasizes that an institution's CRA activities should be undertaken in a safe and sound manner, and does not require institutions to make high-risk loans that may bring losses to the institution.[3][4] An institution's CRA compliance record is taken into account by the banking regulatory agencies when the institution seeks to expand through merger, acquisition or branching. The law does not mandate any other penalties for non-compliance with the CRA.[6][9]"

To further simplify this:

Banks are required to offer credit to ALL communities in which the bank accepts deposits. This means that a bank cannot open a branch in a poor neighborhood for the purposes of receiving deposits and then refuse to offer loans to those depositors.

This lending must occur "in a manner consistent with safe and sound operations." This means that banks are not required to lend in such a way that would lose them money or jeopardize their operations.

Last part: a bank's compliance with the CRA is only taken into account during mergers or expansion projects. THERE ARE NO OTHER PENALTIES FOR NONCOMPLIANCE.

Basically, the people who blame this recession on ACORN and poor people are saying that banks wanted to hew SO CLOSELY to a law that had no real consequences that they were forced to give all their money to poor people and bankrupt themselves. Maybe this explains why there are no more rich bankers or poor people in the US!

Here is a report on the CRA and what part lower income borrowers had in the economic mess. It was written up when Bush was still president, so don't bother trying to claim that Obama tried to clean things up.

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It basically says that foreclosures are higher (by 4%) in areas covered by the CRA, than in middle class or upper class transactions. The majority of derivatives that failed were not related to lower priced mortgages. They were related to schemes that a lot of people used to take money out of their home equity to buy cars and flat panels. It was people buying homes just to hold on until the price went up. I know someone who, with a group of others, put about $100k up against a $1 million dollar home, thinking that they'd flip it when the price went up. They lost their money, but it was their cash. I know people who did a 125% mortgage and bought a brand new mercedes....One fund that failed was called Saturn V and it was entirely made up of 2nd home loans.

Those are the people who got into trouble.

Citi, BofA lived in fear of ACORN? LOL

The advertising budgets of any one these institutions probably exceeds, in a year, all of the money ACORN has raised in its existance. The omnipotence wingnuts have assigned to this relatively obscure group since Obama started running for president is amazing.

Did you even know there is such a thing as the Community Reinvestment Act before you posted? Has anything you've read in response to your post changed your mind about anything?