Financial News // Current

A Photo Haiku: Wall Street Battered, Industry Bailouts Fail and Greedy Corporate CEOs Get Richer

Yesterday, The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal all led with front page stories about... more

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Housing and Foreclosures: The Devastation of American Dreams

The number of homeowners ensnared in the foreclosure crisis grew by more than 70 percent in the third quarter of this year... more

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Bull Market

John Authers - Guide to the financial markets.

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Wachovia reports $23.9 billion loss

NEW YORK (Reuters) – "Wachovia Corp (WB.N) on Wednesday posted a $23.9 billion third-quarter loss, a record for any... more

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Record Drop For Gas Prices

Gasoline prices extended their slide, dropping more than 4 cents a gallon and coming within 25 cents of breaching the $3 level,... more

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AP Poll: 8 in 10 fear hit from financial crisis

Not just Wall Street is running scared. The consequences of the financial meltdown now are sinking in with ordinary Americans,... more

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ATM Fees - Where do they go?

Ok this is a story from January of this year, but i think about it all of the time. Where does all of the money from ATM... more

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Coulter: Blame minority housing law for meltdown

Blame for the current economic crisis has been laid on many doorsteps, including the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999; credit default swaps; hedge funds; the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000; Alan Greenspan; and Phil and Wendy Gramm.

But it has fallen to right-wing pundit Ann Coulter to blaze a truly simple path through the maze of credit derivatives, collateralized loan obligations, tranches, securitization transactions, and Thomson Financial League Tables.

This gentle lady spells out the source and origin of the current economic crisis:

"THEY GAVE YOUR MORTGAGE TO A LESS QUALIFIED MINORITY!"

Coulter is putting forward an argument popular (who could be surprised?) among besieged conservatives, that "social engineering" is the root cause of the current economic crisis -- in the form of a 31-year-old law passed during the Carter administration by a Democratic Congress, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, "intended to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with safe and sound operations."

In Coulter's words, traditional yardsticks of a mortgage applicant's ability to make payments were replaced with "nontraditional measures of credit-worthiness, such as having a good jump shot or having a missing child named 'Caylee';" the result, Coulter continues, is that "middle-class taxpayers are going to be forced to bail out the Democrats' two most important constituent groups: rich Wall Street bankers and welfare recipients."

To make sure her meaning is clear, Coulter echoes a line from the famous anti-affirmative action "White Hands" commercial Jesse Helms used in his 1990 campaign against black challenger Harvey Gantt. The ad shows a pair of white hands crumpling a job rejection slip as the voiceover intones, "You needed that job, you were the best qualified. But they have to give it to a minority because of a racial quota."

Coulter is in the forefront of a concerted drive to shift...

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Blame for the current economic crisis has been laid on many doorsteps, including the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services... more