WHEN WALL STREET IS THE PROLEM, IS BERNANKE THE ANSWER?
Busting Someone in their Home Is Minor Compared To Ejecting Millions From Theirs
By Danny Schechter
Author of Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity
Memo to CNN: Consider this as a theme for Black In America 3.
In his recent press conference, after which President Obama would be called to task for lambasting the police in Cambridge Mass for acting "stupidly"-a comment he later withdrew-he also charged that Wall Street knew what they were doing when they made predatory loans. No one called him on that, not even Wall Street.
Here's what he said. "We were on the verge of a complete financial meltdown. And the reason was because Wall Street took extraordinary risks with other people's money. They were peddling loans that they knew could never be paid back."
If this is unfair, no one has stepped up to the plate to deny it, certainly not the relentless right-wing which fell on Obama like a ton of bricks for suggesting that a lone policeman acted improperly by arresting scholar Skip Gates in his own home.
If it was a smear, you would expect an uproar from the Wall Street-Real Estate complex responsible for millions of families losing their homes. After all, this is a mass problem, not a mere incident. Also, a large proportion of those targeted were people of color. Their lives have been handcuffed, not just their wrists. If you are looking for a case of mass racial profiling, look here. A law suit in Baltimore produced an internal memo from Wachovia Bank in which loan officers called black customers "Mud People."
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