A Bad Idea Made Worse: Community Reinvestment Act Getting More Power

It’s the STD of federal regulation, the Jimmy Carter gift that keeps on giving.

“Despite new evidence the Community Reinvestment Act led to riskier lending and played a key role in the subprime mortgage crisis, the Obama administration is broadening the anti-redlining regulation’s authority and scope, spooking bankers.

A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the nation’s pre-eminent economic research group, states that the CRA “clearly” had a major impact on the flood of subprime loans made in the late 1990s and 2000s, which directly led to the housing crisis.”

Obama fans have been vehemently denying for years that the CRA had anything to do with the housing crisis, despite the fact that it didn’t take more than a second or two of pondering to just know that it probably did. One of the more galling sights during the crisis was seeing some of CRA’s biggest champions being put in charge to “fix” things.

Four more years.