A Missed Chance

Everybody who reads this "wonderful" blog knows that BRT wants Bernie to be president but he won't and possibly the reason why center's on Matt Taibbi's perceptive take as to why. 

Earlier this year, at a union rally in Henderson, Nevada, Hillary Clinton introduced a new theme in her stump speeches.

"If we broke up the big banks tomorrow," Clinton asked, "would that end racism?"

Logically, it was an odd thing to say. After all, lots of things worth doing, even political things, won't "end racism."

But from a practical point of view, Clinton's gambit was brilliant politics. It effectively caricaturized Sanders as a one-note candidate too steeped in attacking billionaires to see the problems of people down on Main Street. And the line fit in a tweet, making it perfect for rocketing around the Internet.

Clinton probably also understood that most people don't draw a connection between Wall Street corruption and race. Although the first victims of the financial crisis tended to be poor, nonwhite and elderly, tales of iniquity in the billionaire class tend instead to resonate with a different audience — specifically, the white liberals and college students who flocked to the Sanders campaign.

There was a political cliché behind this disconnect. When most people hear the words "Wall Street," they think of the stock market. And since African-American voters have traditionally distrusted and avoided the stock market, at least in comparison to white investors, there is a perception that "Wall Street" is an issue that doesn't really concern black people.

In the subprime era, though, banks actually used this cliché to their advantage. They profited immensely from a real-estate operation that specifically targeted people who stayed away from the financial markets, and carefully guarded their money by putting it in their homes.

According to one study, about two-thirds of all subprime loans between 2000 and 2007 were made to people who already owned their homes. The targets were often elderly, in particular men and women of color. Visiting loan officers convinced these borrowers to use the homes they'd poured their savings into their whole lives as ATM machines.

The pitch was: refinance your home, and get a little extra spending money each month! Lots of people went for it. But there was mischief hidden in the fine print of many of these "refi" deals, which often quickly exploded. Before long, the now-departed agent's promises would evaporate into a toxic quicksand of debt, unforeseen penalties and foreclosure.

Like a lot of reporters who covered the crash era, I initially misunderstood the profound racial element in the subprime drama. This wasn't the S&L crisis or the Enron-era accounting scandals or even the Internet bubble, a speculative craze that devoured the savings of white Middle America.

Subprime was different. It was fueled by a particular kind of predatory lending that targeted a very specific group of people.

Read his post as it rings true to the max.