ACORN, which played a starring role in creating the subprime mortgage crisis, plans to add insult to injury by harassing lenders across the nation with protests tomorrow in an effort to coerce them into supporting President Obama's Making Home Affordable foreclosure-avoidance program.
| This is nothing new. They've done this in Chicago for years. |
Austin King, director of ACORN Financial Justice, sent out a press release today advising of the demonstrations that are planned as part of its "Homewrecker 4" campaign. The four financial companies targeted are Goldman Sachs, HomEq Servicing, American Home Mortgage, and OneWest. Read the whole document here.
ACORN plans to hit Dallas, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, St. Louis, New York City, Wilmington (Del.), Columbus (Ohio), Houston, Little Rock, Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, and Seattle.
But let's not forget that ACORN helped to cause the mortgage bubble by strongarming banks into making loans they shouldn't have. And cheering them on was ACORN's lawyer, Barack Obama, who contributed to the increasingly hostile environment for banks when he represented plaintiffs in the 1995 class action lawsuit Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank. The suit demanded that Citibank grant mortgages to an equal percentage of minority and non-minority mortgage applicants. The bank settled the case three years later and reportedly agreed to beef up its lending to unqualified applicants.
ACORN refuses to acknowledge the role that it and the CRA played in the current crisis on Wall Street, and President Obama continues to support stronger enforcement of the disastrous law.
The final paragraph of the press release is unintentionally hilarious:Because millions of Americans are losing their homes, neighborhoods and the economy are in ruins, and while the "Home Wrecker 4" are taking tax dollars and giving away huge bonuses, they refuse to do even the bare minimum for American homeowners by signing up for the Obama foreclosure plan. Millions of Americans are losing their homes and neighborhoods and the economy are in ruins because of groups like ACORN that interfere with markets and force banks to do stupid things. |