The ‘Democratization Of Credit’: Is It Over?

Affirmative Action, Business, Debt, Democracy, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank

WSJ: “The democratization of credit began decades ago. Federal legislation in the late 1970s required banks to avoid discriminatory lending and meet the needs of local communities, spawning a wave of home buying and entrepreneurship in lower-income neighborhoods. The rate of homeownership in families with incomes in the bottom two-fifths rose to nearly 49% by 2001 from below 44% in 1989, according to Fed data analyzed by Mr. Mann at Columbia.”

[This is not what that ignoramus Michael Moore claims. The sad thing about the man’s propaganda is that nobody among the so-called conservative MSM can refute it with reference to First Principles.]

“But the financial crisis and recession have reversed … the ‘democratization of credit,’ forcing a tough adjustment on both low-income families and the businesses that serve them.”

‘We saw an extension of credit to a much deeper socioeconomic level, and they got access to the same credit instruments as middle-class and mainstream Americans,’ says Ronald Mann, a Columbia University law professor. Now, ‘it will be harder for families at the bottom of the income ladder to get credit cards,’ he says.

The financial crisis has forced lenders to be especially cautious with the riskiest borrowers, a category that low-income families often fall into because their debt tends to be higher relative to income and assets. The ratio of credit-card debt to income is 50% higher for the lowest two-fifths of Americans by income than for the top two-fifths, Federal Reserve data show.”

[SNIP]

The following aside is beside the point, but my guess is that if a multiple regression analysis were conducted, IQ would be the underlying variable that would stubbornly crop up to account for this alarming, yet ostensibly unintuitive, ratio of debt to income in low-income individuals.

IN ANY CASE, do you agree that the democratization of credit is on the wane? I find that a dubious statement. The latest legislation described has not eliminated the imperative to lend to risky entities and individuals, so much as it has created, as ever, unintended consequences. These contingencies have, so far, caused banks to twist like pretzels in order to find legal ways around eliminating risky borrowers.

Snub 'Snob Conservatism'

Elections 2008, John McCain, Neoconservatism, Politics, Republicans, Ron Paul, War

From “GOP, RIP?”: “Chief among the leftist factions that would hate to see a recrudescence of the Right are neoconservatives. Enter David Brooks, whose sinecure at the New York Times is a testament to the ‘mushy middle ground’ he has so successfully occupied. … Brooks has flourished in the neoconservative sorority. … he, nevertheless, now sees fit to reinvent himself as a Republican ‘Reformer.’ Brooks the Reformer has been brooding about the dangers of ‘slashing government,’ if the Republican faction he calls ‘Traditionalist’ manages to unseat neocons like himself.”

Now Jack Hunter of Taki’s further distills the essence of the Brook’s bastardized (neo) conservatism: … “But if [David] Brook’s snob conservatism, Thompson and Romney’s wannabe-Reagan-imitations, Huckabee’s holy-rolling and McCain’s mad-bomber mentality are all just stylistic variations of the same Republican policies, it is worth noting the one candidate in 2008 who attracted widespread, bipartisan support, based not only almost purely on his ideas – but ideas that stood in stark contrast to the rest of his party. Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign reflected the antiwar sentiment that helped elect Obama and the anti-government outrage that now defines the grassroots Right. Paul, unlike his fellow 2008 presidential contenders, not only rejected the failed policies of the Bush administration, but despite his lack of charisma, possessed the only political platform that might have had a chance of winning – while remaining conservative to the core.

But strict, limited government conservatism is of little concern to establishment men like Brooks, which makes him completely useless. … ‘the reformists, whose new ideas are not conservative and whose old ideas are the ones that destroyed the Bush GOP, are the very last pundits Republicans should heed.’

Indeed. And if the American Right needs a new, better identity – as many rightly believe it does – a good start might be to move as far away as possible from the politics and person of David Brooks.”

Snub ‘Snob Conservatism’

Elections 2008, John McCain, Neoconservatism, Politics, Republicans, Ron Paul, War

From “GOP, RIP?”: “Chief among the leftist factions that would hate to see a recrudescence of the Right are neoconservatives. Enter David Brooks, whose sinecure at the New York Times is a testament to the ‘mushy middle ground’ he has so successfully occupied. … Brooks has flourished in the neoconservative sorority. … he, nevertheless, now sees fit to reinvent himself as a Republican ‘Reformer.’ Brooks the Reformer has been brooding about the dangers of ‘slashing government,’ if the Republican faction he calls ‘Traditionalist’ manages to unseat neocons like himself.”

Now Jack Hunter of Taki’s further distills the essence of the Brook’s bastardized (neo) conservatism: … “But if [David] Brook’s snob conservatism, Thompson and Romney’s wannabe-Reagan-imitations, Huckabee’s holy-rolling and McCain’s mad-bomber mentality are all just stylistic variations of the same Republican policies, it is worth noting the one candidate in 2008 who attracted widespread, bipartisan support, based not only almost purely on his ideas – but ideas that stood in stark contrast to the rest of his party. Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign reflected the antiwar sentiment that helped elect Obama and the anti-government outrage that now defines the grassroots Right. Paul, unlike his fellow 2008 presidential contenders, not only rejected the failed policies of the Bush administration, but despite his lack of charisma, possessed the only political platform that might have had a chance of winning – while remaining conservative to the core.

But strict, limited government conservatism is of little concern to establishment men like Brooks, which makes him completely useless. … ‘the reformists, whose new ideas are not conservative and whose old ideas are the ones that destroyed the Bush GOP, are the very last pundits Republicans should heed.’

Indeed. And if the American Right needs a new, better identity – as many rightly believe it does – a good start might be to move as far away as possible from the politics and person of David Brooks.”

Update IV: Pretty Please: A Nobel Peace Prize For My Parrot

Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Human Accomplishment, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, The Zeitgeist

Joy! We awoke to some comedic relief this morning: President Obama joined Yasser Arafat and Al Gore in the pantheon of Nobel Peace-Prize recipients. Arafat got the coveted award for his pioneering work on the imploding homicidal human; Gore for inventing Climagedon. (No, the Internet was invented by the US Defense Department. Really.)

I nominate another worthy homie, my little leprechaun of a parrot, T. Cup. I so named him becasue he too is a homie, born into an era when teaching homie heritage and pride are essential. (Hatch date: April 15, 2009.)

Although T. Cup is a hand-raised American Poicephalus, his ancestors hail from Senegal (there might even be some oppression involved there; I’ll leave it up to readers to apprise me of the “history from below”). T. Cup, my little homie, is a small “concentrated parrot”—that is with the huge parrot Ego.

Most important: T. Cup’s little dexterous and dainty claws have never drawn blood (Some Other Homie We Know has blood on his hands—and keep boys dying in backward places where no respectable parrot would hang out).

T. Cup’s ambition: to quell the gang wars in LA, when he is big, that is.

Update I: Well, T. Cup deserves the Nobel Prize for his noble aspirations (and for his humble homie beginnings). Was that not the reason Obama was given a prize? For what he may do in the future for world peace. Not on any objective evidence can it be claimed that he has done anything for world peace so far.

Obama is on the verge of making the Afghanistan war even more intractable. In Iraq nothing much has changed since Bush left office. I am unaware of anything but presidential good intentions with respect to nuclear disarmament.

And frankly Obama ought to have said, “Thanks, but no thanks; there are more deserving people than me.” But he greedily grabbed the undeserved honor. Is bling for the mantle place so hard to resist?

In a way, this undeserved recognition might just stop the World’s Prince of Peace from escalating wars, which he is in the process of doing. On the other hand, if the schedule of incentives and disincentives during a person’s life has taught him that whatever he chooses to do will not affect his Golden-Boy status—then the margin for a learning curve is rather small.

The unwarranted award is also, apparently, for walking humbly with Muslims and calling Islam a peaceful religion. Hey, Bush did that well before Barack, before it became fashionable. Not fair.

Update II: Michelle Malkin rounds up the responses. Right or Left; they are all incredulous.

Update III (Oct. 10): THIN GRUEL. What the Norwegian Nobel Committee said: Obama made “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples”; he changed “the international climate” and made a noise about “his cherished goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons.”

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the committee added.

Where does one begin? A new Dark Ages has decended. The culture reflects and exalts emotional extremes, lack of inhibitions, exhibitionism and assorted grotesquerie: From “Gay” pride to transexualism to fetishisms to Obamaism (a kind of Onanism).

The periods during which Jews would become light in the head and take off after false messiahs were considered dark times in the nation’s history. Now darkness has descended on the world. Mass contagion is everywhere.

Update IV (Oct. 10): Via George Stephanopoulos (“Courtesy of conservative activist Keith Appell):

Barack Obama’s Teleprompter: Big Guy says Bill Clinton called and was gracious in defeat; offered to fly Kanye West over 4 the Nobel awards ceremony.

Erick Erickson: Obama is becoming Jimmy Carter faster than Jimmy Carter became Jimmy Carter.

Ana Marie Cox: Apparently Nobel prizes now being awarded to anyone who is not George Bush.

Headline over AP analysis by White House correspondent Jennifer Loven: He Won, But For What?

Kathryn Jean Lopez, National Review: I want to buy the world a coke.

Ezra Klein: Obama also awarded Nobel prize in chemistry. “He’s just got great chemistry,” says Nobel Committee.

Adam Bromberg, CRC: Nobel Prize Committee must be staffed by out of work comedy writers.

Kristina Hernandez, CRC: It was the Beer Summit that put Obama over the edge.