The Washington Post, February 15, 2020: I wrote the law Bloomberg blames for the financial crisis. He’s wrong.
That story has the cause and effect backward, yet former New York mayor turned presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg has embraced it. In a 2008 speech at Georgetown that recently surfaced, he attributed the collapse to “pressure on banks to make loans to everyone.” He defended redlining entire neighborhoods as sound banking practice. As Bloomberg explained it, “Redlining, if you remember, was the term where banks took whole neighborhoods and said, ‘People in these neighborhoods are poor, they’re not going to be able to pay off their mortgages, tell your salesmen, “Don’t go into those areas.” ’ ”
“And then Congress got involved — local elected officials as well — and said, ‘Oh, that’s not fair, these people should be able to get credit.’ .?.?. Banks started making more and more loans where the credit of the person buying the house wasn’t as good as you would like,” Bloomberg said.
Everything about that claim is wrong. I should know, because I wrote the law.
