You expect different from the guy whose police commissioner deliberately targeted minorities with stop and frisk?
I will not argue that it's not racist (and a terrible, no-good, bad idea with the cariacatures), but I will argue that the vast majority of the subprime lending issues occurred in the urban areas and I believe that it's estimated that somewhere between 60-70% were minority ownership of the subprime loans that were forced to default/foreclose. (Potentially these were the ones where fraud was enacted by the third-party sellers to package to the larger institutions, but I am not nearly conversent down to that level of specificity on the matter). Obviously that reflects aggregate data -- I'm assuming in places like Buffalo, NY (a place hit hard) in subprime loans -- that it was predominantly white (yes, I'm racially-profiling!). So, in a sense, I can see what the cover is likely trying to convey but that doesn't make it a) okay or b) a good idea to attempt to do so in a pretty blatantly terrible way. EDIT: Edited in a not; didn't make functional sense otherwise!
This basic point is not even a valid one, though. The Justice Department under Eric Holder brought charges against the major banking institutions and lenders for disproportionately funneling minorities into subprime mortgages when they qualified for and would have benefited from regular financing options. While they were settled out of court, there was clearly a robust and demonstrable case about this, and no one really disputes this is what happened. One cannot complain a situation that one deliberately warps the rules of the game to create.
Sure it is. Two points: the majority (not all, but most) of the findings about steered-subprime loans to minorities took place at the third-party or acquired stage (e.g. Bank of America buying SunTrust after the loans but before the badness was exposed). As well, the Fed (not an unbiased source, but still) found no evidence of systemic abuse although there was the occasional bad juju that took place. This doesn't account for the cases of outright fraud, which also occurred (either people tricked into mortgages or documents falsified by the lender and packaged up for larger buyout), but that's also typically covered by the first point above. None of this is to say that you are not partially correct: intentional malfeasance by some of the big banks (heck, let's be honest, probably all of the big banks) occurred. Wells Fargo, as far as I am aware though is the only one of the banks who was significantly charged/settled. But also recall one of the primary aspect of TARP was requiring particpating institutions to allow rate-modification (as well as then havin the mortgages backed by the gov't, I believe) -- so the foreclosures and defaults were, for the most part, still people who would not have been able to pay any amount of loan (otherwise they would have been rate-modified down to a level they could afford). PS - the main settlements you are talking about (I believe?) should just be for the overall mess of subprime mortgages and improper lending/foreclosures; not for anything related to your first point about intentionally funneling minorities to subprime when they could afford better rates. AFAIK, only Wells Fargo, SunTrust and CountrywideFinancial were charged for that?
I put that magazine on the shelf and didn't even notice the cover. But then again, 100 a-holes a day leave magazines laying around. Did you know there are magazines about alpacas? and Indian weddings?
