There is simply a lot of blame that has honestly accrued to the CRA and the GSE's in their market-distorting efforts to increase minority and poor ownership of homes.

The banks were coerced by bank examiners that insisted on a certain percentage of extra-risky and non-white loans. The GSE's chimed in with powerful incentives for banks to make bad mortgages and flip them to the market.

The extra mortgage money helped inflate the housing bubble on the up side. The extra defaults helped pop the bubble on the downside.

Author Daniel Gross is trying to defend the indefensible by subtly charging racism.

Don't worry, there is plenty of blame left over for banks, Wall Street, greed, and both political parties.

This has become a major issue for rightwingers. They imply that the economic crisis is primarily caused by these loans.

Gross accurately points out that this is absolutely untrue.

As usual, rightwingers would prefer their political views to be simple enough to print onto bumper stickers. As always, things are far more complicated than that.

Anse, you are saying the right likes bumper-sticker politics?

I'm no conservative, but good night -- one of the most enduringly true stereotypes about the left is that their positions fit rather neatly on bumper stickers. It's simply not debatable that the left wins here hands down -- and it's pretty silly to argue otherwise.

This is a particularly funny Onion take.

JFred:

The banks were coerced by bank examiners that insisted on a certain percentage of extra-risky and non-white loans. The GSE's chimed in with powerful incentives for banks to make bad mortgages and flip them to the market.

Well, thank goodness the banks realized these were high-risk loans and those recipients shouldn't be pointed into loans that themselves carried a high risk. The banks did do that, didn't they? I'm sure no one out there gave worse terms to the poor and then said, "Look how irresponsible they are" when the loans blew up.