DMP isn’t about connecting dots, but about connecting creative people.
That said, with times as they are, I felt the need to explore some of the issues dominating the political conversation today. So here are a few nuggets I found that helped me understand some of the the social-economic context around the sub-prime mess that I don’t think is getting enough mainstream play.
I promise I’ll wrap it all up with some theme music.
First, read about The Reach of Redlining. An excerpt:
[...] When the Federal Housing Admin. was created in 1930s, loans were specifically prohibited in integrated neighborhoods, and all during the New Deal, blacks were excluded from housing programs. In the 1960s, the civil-rights movement brought the landmark passage of the Fair Housing Act, outlawing discrimination in lending. But banks frequently refused to lend in minority neighborhoods throughout the 1960s and 1970s. This continued even into the 1980s - when The Atlanta Journal-Constitution used federal mortgage data to document continued redlining.
But by the 1990s, access to fair housing and credit seemed on the upswing. The Community Reinvestment Act, created to counter redlining and ensure banks invested in their surrounding communities, was strengthened, and banks couldn’t get mergers approved without showing they had complied with it. Other anti-redlining lawsuits and efforts grew, and credit became more widely available to minorities and to people with modest incomes.
In defiance of all that progress, the sub-prime mortgage crisis brought with it a form of reverse redlining — in which lenders provided a glut of credit to neighborhoods once under served by banks. [...]
Once you do your homework and wrap your head around the historical tentacles that emanate from that post and how they might have led to today, check out this this trailer for the documentary, Revolution ‘67:
I’m tired of hearing about how it was either The Dems & Barack Obama or The GOP & John McCain that were explicitly responsible for this mess.
Nov. 4th absolutely matters as to how we’ll navigate the waters ahead of us — Presidential leadership and policy does make a difference — but this financial crisis is indicative of issues much bigger than government regulation.
While Dead Prez might say:
Green Day could respond with:
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