A brilliant summary by Stanley Kurtz via National Review, of ACORN’s behind-the-scenes involvement in the whole mortgage and banking scandal. Starting from 1977 and the passage of the CRA, to their criminal Chicago-style thug/intimidation tactics of banks to their elevation to a virtual cabinet-level position and influence in rewriting Fannie and Freddie mortgage policy in the mid-1990s under the Clinton administration.

Some highlights:

Democrats and ACORN
As early as 1987, ACORN began pressuring Fannie and Freddie to review their standards, with modest results. By 1989, ACORN had lured Fannie Mae into the first of many “pilot projects” designed to help local banks lower credit standards. But it was all small potatoes until the serious pressure began in early 1991. At that point, Democratic Senator Allan Dixon convened a Senate subcommittee hearing at which an ACORN representative gave key testimony. It’s probably not a coincidence that Dixon, like Obama, was an Illinois Democrat, since Chicago has long been a stronghold of ACORN influence.

Dixon gave credibility to ACORN’s accusations of loan bias, although these claims of racism were disputed by Missouri Republican, Christopher Bond. ACORN’s spokesman strenuously complained that his organization’s efforts to relax local credit standards were being blocked by requirements set by the secondary market. Dixon responded by pressing Fannie and Freddie to do more to relax those standards — and by promising to introduce legislation that would ensure it. At this early stage, Fannie and Freddie walked a fine line between promising to do more, while protesting any wholesale reduction of credit requirements.

By July of 1991, ACORN’s legislative campaign began to bear fruit. As the Chicago Tribune put it, “Housing activists have been pushing hard to improve housing for the poor by extracting greater financial support from the country’s two highly profitable secondary mortgage-market companies. Thanks to the help of sympathetic lawmakers, it appeared…that they may succeed.” The Tribune went on to explain that House Democrat Henry Gonzales had announced that Fannie and Freddie had agreed to commit $3.5 billion to low-income housing in 1992 and 1993, in addition to a just-announced $10 billion “affordable housing loan program” by Fannie Mae. The article emphasizes ACORN pressure and notes that Fannie and Freddie had been fighting against the plan as recently as a week before agreement was reached. Fannie and Freddie gave in only to stave off even more restrictive legislation floated by congressional Democrats.

Pretty amazing stuff. As mentioned later, they really got their teeth into all of this once The Rapist-in-Chief was sworn in:

Another factor working in ACORN’s favor was that its increasing success with local banks turned those banks into allies in the battle with Fannie and Freddie. Precisely because ACORN’s local pressure tactics were working, banks themselves now wanted Fannie and Freddie to loosen their standards still further, so as to buy up still more of the high-risk loans they’d made at ACORN’s insistence. So by the 1993, a grand alliance of ACORN, national Democrats, and local bankers looking for someone to lessen the risks imposed on them by CRA and ACORN were uniting to pressure Fannie and Freddie to loosen credit standards still further.

At this point, both ACORN and the Clinton administration were working together to impose large numerical targets or “set asides” (really a sort of poor and minority loan quota system) on Fannie and Freddie. ACORN called for at least half of Fannie and Freddie loans to go to low-income customers. At first the Clinton administration offered a set-aside of 30 percent. But eventually ACORN got what it wanted. In early 1994, the Clinton administration floated plans for committing $1 trillion in loans to low- and moderate-income home-buyers, which would amount to about half of Fannie Mae’s business by the end of the decade. Wall Street Analysts attributed Fannie Mae’s willingness to go along with the change to the need to protect itself against still more severe “congressional attack.” News reports also highlighted praise for the change from ACORN’s head lobbyist, Deepak Bhargava.

As can be seen here, there was and is a lot more to this urban organized mafia then just simply helping the Dems steal elections by turning in fraudulent voter registration cards or “counseling” low-income households into getting essentially “welfare housing” by making noise at the local bank. Just like Soros, they were acting as snakes in the grass to destroy the very structure and integrity of this country’s financial centers, thereby making nationalization of said institutions as easy as walk in the park. Just have a few higher-ups yell “PANIC! The world economy will be in recession in 48 hours if we do not do anything!!!” and BOOM. The government now owns your mortgage, regardless of it’s status. And with that came The Mortgage Extortion Bill, which in addition to giving the government ownership of virtually all U.S. mortgages, also includes plenty of pork for ACORN and other Terrorist Left groups.

And you know once government gets a hold of something, it will 1) never let go of it and 2) will start regulating it. You think there is too much government in your lives now, wait until they start regulating your home. What type of energy it can use, whether you can upgrade it, or whether you can smoke in it. Not to mention, this also gives the ACORN types the power to achieve the ultimate in social engineering. Determining where you can live.

Sounds a lot like Maoist China, does it not?

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