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Originally Posted by filtherton
Neither the current financial crisis nor the recent oil spills have high taxes or government interference as their proximate causes.
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Part of the reason for the financial crisis was the government's insistence on lowering requirements for loans so that people who had no business taking out a mortgage could do so.
Frank's fingerprints are all over the financial fiasco - The Boston Globe
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The roots of this crisis go back to the Carter administration. That was when government officials, egged on by left-wing activists, began accusing mortgage lenders of racism and "redlining" because urban blacks were being denied mortgages at a higher rate than suburban whites.
The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to "meet the credit needs" of "low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods." Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, encouraged this "subprime" lending by authorizing ever more "flexible" criteria by which high-risk borrowers could be qualified for home loans, and then buying up the questionable mortgages that ensued.
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That, and people taking out home equity loans to finance a lifestyle they really couldn't afford were contributors to the problem.
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Originally Posted by filtherton
Not to mention that you're asking for more government interference with respect to immigration - one would expect a proponent of the free market to encourage immigration and the cheap labor it provides. In this regard one could view illegal immigration as a form of probusiness civil disobedience.
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The government has the right to enforce its borders. You should note that Mexico. among others is far less tolerant of illegal immigrants.
If people in other countries want to provide cheap labor, let them do it from their home countries.
Any candidate that proposes any form of amnesty for illegal immigration has lost my vote.