SUBPRIME LENDERS TARGETED BLACKS & LATINOS

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GLEN FORD, BLACK AGENDA RADIO - In a report titled, "Foreclosed: State
of the Dream 2008," United for a Fair Economy details the catastrophic
losses inflicted on blacks and latinos in the U.S. at the hands of
predatory lenders - "the greatest loss of wealth to people of color in
modern U.S. history." With more than half of blacks in many cities
caught in the subprime trap - and with even these usurious financing
schemes disappearing in the wake of the bubble- burst - the prospects
for Blacks to amass wealth have grown bleaker than at any time in living
memory. . .

The report shows definitively that banks and other lending institutions
trapped Blacks and Latinos in predatory lending schemes as a matter of
policy. "Even a surface check of the demographics shows," the report
says, "that, in city after city, a solid majority of subprime loan
recipients were people of color." The very scope of the crime proves
that the lending crisis is not the product of black culture, but the
result of calculated policies, near-uniformly carried out by virtually
all of the nation's mortgage lending institutions. . .

The wealth loss is staggering: People of color have collectively lost
between "$164 billion to $213 billion over the past eight years," with
Latinos losing slightly more than African Americans. Before the crisis
hit, it was estimated that it would take 594 years - more than half a
millennium - for blacks to catch up with whites in household wealth.
Now, in the aftermath of the home mortgage massacre, it could take ten
times as long - more than 5,000 years - before blacks achieve homeowner
parity with whites.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/012308LA.shtml

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