After reading the astounding revelations now coming to light about those who caused the financial meltdown–i.e. “community organizers” that, wielding a strengthen Community Reinvestment Act, forced the banking industry into the sub-prime lending disaster–it is becoming clear that this crisis is not just a case of irrational exuberance or even greed run amok…it is “financial terrorism.”

Listen to what Matthew Vadum says at American Spectator (emphasis added)…

Activist groups were encouraged to agitate by the Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act, which enshrined in law a kind of lending protection racket. Banking regulators were given the power to make trouble for banks that failed to lend enough money to so-called underserved communities. Banks that paid enough — whatever that means — got left alone, but banks that didn’t, got their legs broken.

How much money is enough to satisfy the law? Even the Federal Reserve Board can’t say for sure. From the Fed’s online summary of the Act:

The CRA requires that each depository institution’s record in helping meet the credit needs of its entire community be evaluated periodically. That record is taken into account in considering an institution’s application for deposit facilities.

Neither the CRA nor its implementing regulation gives specific criteria for rating the performance of depository institutions. Rather, the law indicates that the evaluation process should accommodate an institution’s individual circumstances.

One can almost imagine a CRA commissar saying, “It’d be a real shame if something happened to that nice bank of yours.” When in doubt about potential CRA liability, don’t risk committing a crime against diversity: make the loan. Or else.

After CRA came into effect, Saul Alinsky-inspired “community organizer” groups such as Greenlining, ACORN, and National Council of La Raza got into the shakedown business. They preach the hateful class-warfare rhetoric of their fellow community organizers Jeremiah Wright, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Michael Pfleger.

They rage against capitalism and demand crushing taxes and aggressive wealth-redistribution programs. They demand more government spending on social programs, a higher minimum wage, and gun control. Depending which way the economic wind is blowing, they demand more subprime lending, or curbs on subprime lending, which through the magic of dysphemism, is linguistically transformed into “predatory lending.”

Tags: American Spectator, community organizers, community reinvestment act, financial terrorism, Matthew Vadum, obama