Not sure why you think I'm getting angry. I'm glad to be speaking with someone who is pretty knowledgeable about this topic. I just don't think you read betwe

Not sure why you think I'm getting angry. I'm glad to be speaking with someone who is pretty knowledgeable about this topic. I just don't think you read between the lines :-) Have you read Tom Wolfe's "Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers"? I have, and perhaps it's for this reason that whenever I see some sort of "Community Activist Organization" I immediately think of one type of organization. It colors my thinking when I read something like this, talking about a $750 billion pledge for community development - http://www.housingfinance.com/ahf/articles/2004/March/Bank_mergers.html http://www.housingfinance.com/ahf/articles/2004/March/Bank_m... Or how about Phil Gramm speaking at the American Enterprise Institute (http://www.aei.org/events/eventID.1862,filter.all/transcript.asp http://www.aei.org/events/eventID.1862,filter.all/transcript...): "We ended up when the bubble finally broke with three different quotas. One quota was for below-average-income borrowers and that was a requirement that 56 percent of the loans bought by Freddie and Fannie had to conform to that guideline. The second quota had to do with the low-income individuals. These were individuals with 60 percent of the income of the census tract in which they lived, and by the time the bubble broke, that quota was 27 percent of all mortgages held by Freddie and Fannie had to fit within that quota. And the final quota that was set in proportional terms was geographically targeted principally at inner cities and depressed areas, and that was a quota that said 35 percent of all the loans held by Freddie and Fannie or purchased by them had to fall into that category." Then there's Countrywide (not a bank and hence not covered by CRA), which originated something like 20% of America's subprime mortgages (Countrywide did not hold on to these mortgages but sold them to banks). Here's a great 2007 NYTimes article about their wonderful lending practices: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/business/yourmoney/26country.html?_r=1&hp http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/business/yourmoney/26count... And a great presentation at Harvard by their CEO talking about the 600 billion he's pledging for "previously underserved Americans" - http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/publications/homeownership/M03-1_mozilo.pdf http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/publications/homeownership/M03-1...