Look in the mirror, Jesse

Jesse Jackson, race pimp extraordinaire, has set his sights on “predatory lenders” in the lastest crisis de jour of subprime lenders. (Reuters)

Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson will hold a rally on Wall Street next week to persuade the financial community to help people who are foreclosing on their homes amid a deepening mortgage crisis.
 
Jackson wants financial leaders to restructure mortgage plans for people who risk losing their homes because they are falling behind in their payments, he said in a statement.

“Two million homes nationwide will be at risk of foreclosure by 2008,” Jackson said in a statement. “Most foreclosures result from shady products that have been offered by subprime lenders ultimately financed by Wall Street.”

I watched Jackson on the local Fox 5 news last night as he called the mortgage problems a “financial tsunami” in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Apparently, the word “crisis” has lost it’s cache and Leftist hyperbole demands a more urgently discriptive term.

But, it’s significant that Jackson was in Prince George’s County – the county borders on Washington DC’s poorer Black neighborhoods. PG County largely reflects it’s neighbors’ economic and demographic condition. Most of the businesses that ply trade in both areas are black-owned and black-operated franchises. The predators that Jesse Jackson are blaming are largely Black, but Jackson and others are trying to cover up that inconvenient fact (Bloomberg);

As many as 2 million homes are at risk of foreclosure, Jackson said in a statement. The rallies will be held Dec. 10, and also sponsored by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and National Urban League. Other rallies will be held in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Detroit, New Orleans, Washington and Chicago.

Jackson’s plans show how the increase in delinquencies on subprime mortgages, some of which were the product of what Federal Reserve officials said were “lax” lending practices, is capturing political attention. Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton, a candidate for her party’s presidential nomination, this week called for a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures.

There is definitely greed involved in the subprime lending market – the mortgage companies, their representatives and ultimately, the borrowers themselves share in the blame. The borrowers were willing to accept the temporary lower rate in the short term, fully knowing the payment would bloom into a much larger payment – and they now claim ignorance, with Jesse Jackson showing the way. Jackson and the media have compounded the problem by telling delinquent mortgagees that they aren’t culpable if they default on their loans. 

But, either way, Jackson knew he’d get to hold mortgage companies responsible; can you imagine the hue and cry from the race pimp if mortgage companies hadn’t been so “lax” in their lending practices and had excluded Blacks from the housing growth of the last half-decade?

Jackson complained in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled A Marshall Plan for Mortgages that President Bush’s plan doesn’t go far enough;

The Bush administration’s proposed five-year freeze on home-loan rates, while a step in the right direction, doesn’t go far enough. The plan, unveiled yesterday, simply doesn’t help most of the families facing a foreclosure threat. Of the 6.5 million subprime borrowers in total, only about 750,000, or 12%, would be helped, according to some estimates. They are the homeowners who are up-to-date now with their loan payments but would fall behind and risk foreclosure when the loan resets in the coming year.

Jackson’s main problem is that there’s no government money for him to skim off with his Rainbow Coaliton – that’s why he’s driving his pity train to Wall Street.

It’s time for another U.S. government-sponsored Marshall Plan. But instead of reconstructing Europe after World War II, today’s Marshall Plan for mortgages would restore homeowners’ and investors’ confidence and dreams.

In other words, Jackson’s first solution is always government (taxpayer) money instead of a last resort. Mortgage companies don’t want people to stop paying their mortgages – that makes no sense, where would they make money if people lost their homes. But in the world of Jesse Jackson where all money is government money, apparently it makes perfect sense.

Category: Economy, Media, Politics, Society