Pay your bills on time? Racist!!

from Sister Toldjah by Phineas


Pay your bills on time? Racist!!: "

Yes, if you pay your bills on time and thus have a good credit score and the banks reward you with a lower-interest mortgage, it’s not because you’ve been responsible and thus represent a lower credit risk. Nope, it’s because the banks (and probably you, by extension) are RAAAAACIST!!

Banks will be accused of employing discriminatory credit standards when making mortgages in a series of fair housing complaints that a national consumer coalition plans to file beginning next week.

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition plans to challenge the widespread practice of requiring borrowers asking for FHA-backed loans to have higher FICO scores than the minimum required by the FHA, according to a report from Ken Harney at New Times.

The FHA requires a minimum FICO score of 500. Borrowers with down-payments as low as 3.5 percent must have a score of at least 580. Borrowers with scores between 500 and 580 must put a minimum of 10 percent down.

Several banks require higher rates. At the start of 2009, many banks moved their minimum FICO score for an FHA backed loan up to 620. Wells Fargo and Bank of America recently raised their required score to 640. FICO scores run from 300 to 850, with higher scores supposedly indicating a lower risk of future defaults.

The NCRC says that the higher FICO requirements disproportionately discriminate against African-American and Latino borrowers, many of whom have credit scores above the 580 threshold set by FHA but below the higher minimums set by banks.

It argues that because the FHA insures the loans, there is “no legitimate business justification” for rejecting applicants on the basis of FICO scores that are acceptable to FHA.

Bear in mind that the groundwork for the current financial crisis was laid by groups suing banks under the Community Redevelopment Act (and through thuggish street tactics) to lower their credit standards to make risky sub-prime loans to minority borrowers. Then it was Socialist community organizations such as ACORN and their lawyer, one Barack Obama. Now it’s the NCRC. But the game is the same, forcing banks to make risky loans to people who probably can’t afford them. The banks back then were unable to resist, tarred by the brush of racism by community organizations below and pressured by race-pandering politicians from above.

And where did that get us?

The logical error here is that disparate results among ethnic groups must represent racism requiring legal redress, not simply differences in economic status due to income, personal financial responsibility, and the vagaries of life. Nope, it has to be due to systemic, institutional racism that requires the government to engage in social engineering in order to create more winners. In the end, all that will do is turn us all into losers as the same bad practices are revived in an already weakened financial system.

It’s said that the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. If that’s true, then this suit is just plain crazy.

Via Mark Hemingway.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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