More testimony and evidence that the CRA is not to blame for the current crisis:
Amid the ongoing debate over mortgage lending reform, a top federal regulator took a seat before Congress last week and debunked the myth — popular among conservatives — that a law encouraging loans to low-income communities has been largely responsible for the nation’s housing crisis.
“I can state very definitively,” Sandra Braunstein, director of the Federal Reserve’s consumer and community affairs division, said during a House Financial Institutions subcommittee hearing Wednesday, “that from the research we have done, the Community Reinvestment Act is not one of the causes of the current crisis.”
As a newly minted Democrat, I honestly have ZERO idea why Republicans are so eager to blame this mess on the CRA when there simply is no evidence to support it. The CRA is not one of those things that was ever on my radar when I was unknowingly spewing wingnut talking points, but right now, anywhere you go in the wingnuttosphere and there is a full-throated and frothing rant about the evil CRA. Here is a vintage effort by Stanley Kurtz (obligatory link to Sadly, No’s! comparison of Kurtz to Big Gay Al, which makes me laugh every time I listen to it) which combines the CRA, ACORN, Fannie Mae, Obama, the Chicago Woods Foundation (Boo- AYERS!) and Bill Clinton. The only things missing were gay marriage, Iraqi WMD, and ANWR.
I hate to be this cynical, but other than just trying to avoid any blame for the mess whatsoever, the only reasons I can think of for them continuing to try to pin this current financial crisis on the CRA are pretty ugly and better left unsaid.