The Federal Reserve and ACORN: Bosom Buddies

ACORN has been in the news lately for advising on how to pimp out underage girls from South America, but its real criminality goes much deeper and involves the Federal Reserve. Read the whole thing for the sordid details. Then you’ll understand how the government created the massive real-estate bubble that popped in 2008.

Fed-ACORN Criminality by Thomas DiLorenzo.

ACORN may be found guilty of the relatively petty crimes it is now being accused of, but there is a much larger issue that is being ignored. Over the past thirty years or so, ACORN has been a major player in what can be described as a legalized extortion racket administered by the Federal Reserve and the Comptroller of the Currency, among other federal government agencies. The racket started with Jimmy Carter’s 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which empowered “community groups” like ACORN to effectively extort billions (yes, billions with a “b”) of dollars from banks. Much of the money is then used for ACORN’s political activities, which involve the mass registration of Democratic Party voters; supporting left-wing political candidates at all levels of government; organizing rallies, protests, and lobbying efforts for various planks of its “People’s Platform,” which is essentially the same as the Socialist Party Platform of 1922. The “People’s Platform” once promised, “We will continue our fight until the American way is just one way, until we have shared the wealth . . .” Accordingly, the organization has advocated the government takeover of the energy and healthcare industries, punishing taxation, massive income redistribution, pervasive price controls, and just about every asinine socialistic policy that one can think of.

The Federal Reserve Board has been ACORN’s “partner” in this endeavor ever since 1977, when the Fed was given responsibility (along with the Comptroller of the Currency) for enforcing the CRA. For those who are not yet familiar with the CRA, which was significantly strengthened during the Clinton administration, it works like this: The ostensible purpose of the Act is to get banks to make more mortgage loans in “minority and low-income” neighborhoods. These loans have been defined by the government as “sub-prime” loans, implying that the borrowers have credit ratings just a tiny, tiny smidgen below the “prime” or highest-credit-rating borrowers. This of course is a farce, as nearly everyone now knows. The Fed keeps track of such loans, and gives each lender a CRA ranking. A poor ranking can destroy a bank’s plans for branch expansions, mergers, and other activities.