Mad World – Economics is Racist, pt 1

Gary Jules once sang a song called “Mad World” which was a melancholy little tune that makes one contemplate if he was either high or considering suicide. But the refrain is that its a mad world because of the oxymoronic and depressing shit going on. Listening to Democratic presidential candidates is a lot like that. Enter our subject for today.

What is a word for a woman who is confirmed to have used her body, sex acts, to get an elected office only to have the hubris to try and lecture the rest of us on moral righteousness? “Whore” is a close word, meaning according to Merriam Webster, “a woman who engages in sexual acts for money : PROSTITUTEalso, informal + offensive : a promiscuous or immoral woman.” But it has lost its sting to be able to accurately describe the arrogance of such an individual or blind obliviousness to her own conflict of interest. Urban dictionary tries with the word, “manizer,” a take off of womanizer, yet still also doesn’t describe how repugnant, disgusting, and truly stupid of a person this can be while still maintaining cunning enough to use raw blowjobs to get congressional pay and lifetime retirement. No, there simply has to be a 12 letter name for such woman. Alas, there is. 

The media call her Kamala Harris.

Kamala Harris’s story of how she became the inept senator and general waste of oxygen she is today is well known by many and easily researchable by those who aren’t aware. She’s what would have happened if Monica Lewinsky had ran for elected office after her affair with Bill Clinton. Only 2 differences; Monica was only 22 yrs old when it happened and had no idea what she was doing. Kamala Harris was in her 30’s and did. The other difference is that Monica was a good person who got fucked (literally) by a guy trying to defend his own position. Kamala is an unskilled lawyer who would fuck another guy (literally), and another one, and another one if it meant getting her where she wants to be. In short, she is EVERYTHING wrong with politics.

So color me shocked (not really) when her most recent headline maker is an abject failure. Harris tweeted:

“After generations of discrimination, it’s time to give Black families a real shot at homeownership — historically one of the most powerful drivers of wealth. My new policy will remove unfair barriers Black Americans face when they go to qualify for a home loan.”

“I’ll invest $100 billion to put homeownership within reach for up to 4 million families. We must close the homeownership gap.” The program would target residents in red-lined communities — areas the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation has dissuaded lenders from investing in —  which her campaign identified as a culprit behind wealth disparities.

Ok.

Lets stop for a second.

This is exactly how we got to the financial housing crisis of 2008. Like ver-fucking-batim. To the letter.

You’d have thought we learned the lesson well enough, but I guess it really has been 10 years since then, so maybe we should re-visit this dangerous policy and its disastrous impact on us all.

Since 1964, federal law has made it illegal to use race as a factor in determining to lend for purchasing homes. There, that’s the equal part. Oh, you want more? Well, apparently so did the black community and politicians that pander to the black vote. Thus, there were major policy revisions under Bill Clinton’s administration in the late 1990’s that made for special allotment, consideration, etc. for black people trying to get a loan. So much so that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the tune of billions of dollars handed out loans at interest rates below prime rates to black people, as well as others, but blacks especially benefitted from the policy. It, afterall, was intended to fix the “home ownership gap.” This concept is nothing new. Except that Kamala is trying to sell it as one word. You cant just make shit up, honey. Even though you’re a democrat, its still the king’s english darling.

But black people don’t save money (like many white rednecks too, btw. Bad money habits know no race) and thus don’t have money for a down payment. No bother, policies were fixed to give these loans to people without a provision requiring a down payment.

The principle behind this was simple. Some fucking bean counters somewhere made the connection that there was a correlation between wealth and home ownership. What they failed to identify was causation; why that was so and what caused or allowed for that to happen? Read this: the failure of major economists like Paul Krugman (NYT fanboy), major banks and lending institutions, and our own US Dept of Housing as well as our Federal Reserve Bank to ask this question directly resulted in the lost retirement and wealth of hundreds of millions of Americans. In some ways, we still strive to recover. In some ways, some never would as business shuttered and industries off-shored. Several hundred thousand still never re-entered the economy or workforce. It took Trump 3 years to get us back to pre-’08 levels of economic activity. The fact that we are even hearing this kind of talk again from a presidential candidate is as appalling as it is shocking. I shouldn’t be surprised.

And so we did. We loaned billions in subprime loans to motherfuckers we knew couldn’t afford it. Black people were “moving on up, to the east side,” into quarter million dollar homes with big ass garages to park their spinner rims and Cadillacs on 24’s. And everything was great. Until it wasn’t.

The question never got asked, and thus the answer didn’t seem important. But I will pose it now; why is wealth linked to owning a home? And what is its affect, causation or correlation?

Owning a home can be a great thing. Can be. It can also bankrupt you. It can keep you broke. It can be an asset, but is usually just a source of easy capital like a really high credit line. Its a lot of work, and a lot of expense just to maintain one. Maintaining one takes money, and discipline.

To get money and discipline require behavior modification that encourages both of those. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the crucial lynch-pin to all of it. Its the behavior that builds wealth, savings, and allows for buying a house, and even afterward for taking care of it. Not the other way around. It’s ludicrous to believe that buying someone a house, shortcutting to the end result, is somehow a key to making the kind of habits one needs to be successful. That’s like giving you a grocery store and expecting you to know how to farm.

Harris, of course, blames “red-lining,” the practice of Lenders outlining certain areas not to lend to. She says this is due to racism. In fact, its basic math.

There are many factors that go into mortgage lending. The biggest two are 1) the ability of the buyer to pay back the loan and 2) should they default, the ability of the bank to get their money back out out of it by re-selling it to someone else.

Harris no doubt has not bothered to price out properties recently in the high crime ridden areas that her target electorate chooses to live in. Chooses being the key word there. No one is forcing them to stay in shithole areas. But they choose to want to live in areas near others like themselves. Well, then you get stuck with what you choose to be around. No one, no legislator, no law, no lender, nor any person that I have ever heard of today has endorsed or tried to influence a black person from being able to move out of the hood. Nobody. Its a choice.

Harris has to be at least somewhat aware of the economic demographics of her electorate. Bottom line; based on the earnings of the black community on the whole, especially those living in urban areas don’t support mortgage payments. Nor do they support expensive repairs home owners usually face like roofing repairs, plumbing repairs, HVAC repairs, lawn maintenance, appliances, etc. Not when 90% of high school black males in Baltimore failed to pass the standardized testing for math in that state. Not when 70% of black babies (the ones that weren’t aborted) are born out of wedlock. Not when 13% of the population is convicted of felony crimes and sent to prison for 50% of the crimes committed.

Nobody made black mothers choose to have babies with with the men they have sex with. Nobody put a gun to black men’s heads in droves and told them they had to go be felons. No teacher told black males not to study hard or didn’t offer them special help if needed to learn. It would appear that Harris’s target audience has a culture problem. No white person did this to them. Frankly, most of us just couldn’t care less to try and stymie them; we have our own problems and challenges to overcome. And yet, rather than focusing on why the black community is struggling to EARN the wealth to afford a home, and how to build that behavior that allows it, she is instead focused on making up bullshit bogeymen that don’t exist to facilitate the great democrat lies. Just one more in a long line of them to the black community.

Harris talks about spending 100 Billion dollars on closing this gap. Why not 7 times that amount? Because that’s how much it cost us last time to fix it; the TARP bailout package was $700 billion dollars. What exactly will she spend the 100 billion on? The down payment and closing costs for home buyers. Essentially, this was the beginning of how the crash started. All that is needed now is relaxed lending rules or hungry lenders with loose lending practices.

This is counterproductive and setting her constituents up for failure. Bankruptcy and foreclosure are crippling blows that hit hard on a credit score and can hinder people for a decade. One of the first barometers to whether or not you can afford the house is by your ability to come up with the down payment for it. It means you have to have a job with proven income and be capable of saving money; two things Lil Paco on the block cant do selling weed and pills. But I’ll bet he “keeps that thang on him. Fo sho’.”

Of course, all of this is of no consequence to Harris. She legitimately doesn’t give a shit. She’s just trying to do what she always has. Fuck the black community (literally) or whoever she has to to get what she wants.