Bloomberg and the 2008 housing debacle

NY Times:

Bloomberg Once Linked 2008 Crisis to End of Redlining Bias in Home Loans

The billionaire drew condemnation for his newly surfaced comments on redlining, in which banks discriminated against people of color seeking to borrow money to afford homes.

Redling was unfair, but so was the Democrats push to give loans to people who could not afford to pay.  The push to make loans to people who could not afford them was even crueler and more disastrous than the redlining.  It wound up having a cascading effect on people who could afford their loans as their houses lost value because of so many foreclosures.  The inability to sell a home for what was owed had a devasting impact on the economy in certain areas of the country.

Redling wound up being a thoughtless way of dealing with people struggling in a poor neighborhood.  The people applying for credit should be judged on their own ability to pay.  Doing away with redlining, should not have led to ignoring that factor in making loans.  But it did because Democrats wanted to push homeownership on the poor.

BTW, Elizabeth Warren says Bloomberg wanted bands to be bigger racists.  I don't think that is what he was saying at all.  He was talking about the switch from thoughtless discrimination through redlining to thoughtless loan agreements when redlining was abolished.