In Blake Hasenmiller’s article, “Welfare for rich people,” he made the claim that the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 “forced banks to loan money to poor people on welfare ….” This is hardly the case, and is a follow up to the Fair Housing Act of 1968, passed by Lyndon Johnson’s administration, in an era of sweeping reform against racially-based discrimination in regulated service areas. The FHA of 1968 protected against racially segregated neighborhoods, providing all with equal rights of purchase, but it did not cover the lending practices of local banks, which could continue to discriminate without reprehension to whom they gave loans. The ECOA of 1974 changed that by making credit transactions free of discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status or age, and governmental public assistance. This freedom, along with the Americans with Disability Act of 1990, provides a much needed protection from discrimination for not only race, but also disability. The ECOA aides people on Supplemental Security Income and other federal programs that protect the disabled.

Furthermore, Hasenmiller’s claim for deregulation is unfounded. Consider the reversal of the Glass-Steagal Act of 1933, championed by Jim Leach, R-Iowa, and signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1999. This repeal provided for deregulation of commercial and housing financial institutions, allowing these institutions to lend, invest and speculate in far greater volume. The banking industry had been asking for this since the 1980s, but it had not been in bill form due to the loss-potential and need for greater centralized governance that Congress felt was needed to watch these institutions. The banking industry spent $200 million in lobbying efforts in 1998 to pass this bill. This is the heart of the issue: a Congressional blind eye to the outright robbery of the middle class, paid in full through the bribes of increasingly greedy corporations.

Anthony Freeman

Senior

History