Henkel is an old-fashioned bigot, as I have explained in detail on several occasions.
Henkel's Racism
Henkel claims that the global crisis occurred because the U.S. banned "redlining" by banks. Redlining refers to the practice of home lenders circling communities in red on a map based on where blacks live. The lenders would refuse to lend for home purchases in those communities. The context is that Henkel was debating with James Galbraith the causes of the crisis. Henkel made this argument in writing. He did not make some spontaneous error in an oral debate.
"Mr. Galbraith should familiarize himself Jimmy Carter's "Housing and Community Development Act" where in Section VIII Banks were prohibited the practice of "red lining" which until then enabled them to distinguish 'better living quarters' and 'slums.'"
This is a common meme among ultra-right-wing Europeans in finance. The head of the oldest private bank in Switzerland, Dr. Hummler (he has a Ph. D in economics from U. Rochester) infamously claimed that:
"It is said that the vast majority of insolvent home-owners belong to ethnic minorities."
Hummler then claimed that this explained why Obama was bailing out homeowners.
If the dishonesty and filth of these claims is not obvious you should read the link immediately above and these links (here and here) about Henkel's ode to racist lending denials.
There is something particularly wonderful about Bank of America's top European advisor praising racism in lending -- and telling an American academic he needs to read up on how wonderful racism was for America.
Henkel's Ode to German Bigotry
Consider the policy advice that Mr. Henkel gives in the German context. By way of background the reader needs to know that at the time of these events (2009), Dr. Thilo Sarrazin was one of German's most senior central bankers. Like so many of the ultra-right economists who inflicted austerity on the eurozone, Sarrazin is also ultra-right-wing in his politics.
"'Dr Thilo Sarrazin, a member of the executive board and head of the bank's risk control operations, told Europe's culture magazine Lettre International that Turks with low IQs and poor child-rearing practices were 'conquering Germany' by breeding two or three times as fast.
'A large number of Arabs and Turks in this city, whose number has grown through bad policies, have no productive function other than as fruit and vegetable vendors,' he said.
'Forty per cent of all births occur in the underclasses. Our educated population is becoming stupider from generation to generation. What's more, they cultivate an aggressive and atavistic mentality. It's a scandal that Turkish boys won't listen to female teachers because that is what their culture tells them', he said.
'I'd rather have East European Jews with an IQ that is 15pc higher than the German population,' he said."
Yes, he actually said that things had gotten so bad that he'd prefer to have Jews, rather than Arabs and Turks, move to Germany. (Because, as we all know, Jews are 15 percent smarter.) How did Henkel, Bank of America's senior advisor, respond to this delusional hate speech (made public in early October 2009)? He began an immediate media crusade in support of Mr. Sarrazin's bigotry. He gave video interviews and sent (and published widely on the web) an open letter to "Lieber Herr Sarrazin" to express his unqualified support for Mr. Sarrazin's bigoted statements. He entitled it: "Ich unterstà ¼tze Sarrazin ohne Wenn und Aber" (I support Sarrazin without any "if" or "but.")
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