Racism?

BOSTON (Reuters) - Barbara Anderson and her husband know racism. Among the first blacks to move into an Ohio neighborhood 25 years ago, she watched in horror as white neighbors burned her garage nearly to the ground.

Fast-forward to 2007 and Anderson talks of a different sort of discrimination: brokers of subprime mortgages who prey on borrowers with weak credit histories like the Andersons, who raised eight children in Cleveland's Slavic Village district.

"These subprime lenders target you to take you through disaster," said Anderson, 59, who filed for bankruptcy after a legal tussle with a subprime lender, a "nightmare" that she said ended four years ago when her home was nearly foreclosed.

"I was fortunate. I went to another bank that decided to give me a chance with a new loan. The day that happened my headache stopped, my blood pressure lowered, my sick stomach went away, and it was because now I could see some daylight."

Across the United States, blacks and Hispanics are more likely to get a high-cost, subprime mortgage when buying a home than whites, a major factor in a wave of foreclosures in poor, often black neighborhoods nationwide as a housing slowdown puts millions of "subprime" borrowers at risk of default.

Even more troubling, real-estate industry analysts say, is an alarming proportion of blacks and Hispanics who received subprime loans by predatory lenders even when their credit picture was good enough to deserve a cheaper loan.

In six major U.S. cities, black borrowers were 3.8 times more likely than whites to receive a higher-cost home loan, and Hispanic borrowers were 3.6 times more likely, according to a study released this month by a group of fair housing agencies.

I'm not sure how it can be considered racist when it's the fault of the borrower that they got suckered into a shitty loan? Am I missing something?

I find it all facinating to be honest.

Nobody really wants to see families up-rooted from their homes. John is like an undertaker really. He didn't kill the guy, he's just burying him. He didn't cause people to get suckered into a bad mortgage, he just helps the bank recoup money by selling the houses for them. The real evil-doers are the mortgage selling scumbags (bless their hearts) that intentionally put people in loans that are not good for them.

So, it's kind of weird when you get excited that a huge influx of foreclosures are happening and you make a bundle off of it. But the larger lesson here is that you can never go wrong by betting on the stupidity of others.

There's a very large black and hispanic area in Dallas.. but we're really not rooting for all the blacks to get foreclosed on. In fact, it would be nice if the government bailed them all out.. say if the house is less than 80K. There's not much money in those houses. We want massive amounts of people in $300k+ houses to get foreclosed on.. and it would be nice if they leave the house in nice shape.

It costs a lot to keep me happy after all.. :)