Mark Masterson Says No I have read several articles and opinion pieces by columnists that start or include a phrase like '"The roots of today's.... Mark Masterson Says No

I have read several articles and opinion pieces by columnists that start or include a phrase like '"The roots of today's mortgage-based financial crisis can be traced back to the Community Reinvestment
Act...'."

I am disgusted by the lack of facts--or the deliberate distortion of the facts--in these columns.

The facts are that CRA was implemented to combat redlining. It was also used to combat racial bias. The Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group (PCRG) did a study on mortgage rejections in the mid- 1990s. One thing that was striking from that study was that you were more likely to get a loan if you were a white male, age 21 and making $18,000 a year than if you were a black male age 30 and making $30,000 per year.


READ MORE