Eric Holder's New Witch Hunt; Coming To A Bank Near You

Attorney General Eric Holder has rolled out a big government shakedown of small banks. Even before the nation has recovered from the financial meltdown of 2008 the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ is busy engineering a second sub prime crisis. The Justice Department has asked several banks to relax their mortgage underwriting standards and approve loans for minorities with poor credit as part of a new crackdown on alleged discrimination. DOJ has already generated some $20 million in loan set asides as remediation to victims of discrimination. Such alleged discrimination requires no complaining witness nor does the government have to prove intent in most cases since small banks would rather swallow the loss of income than commit the resources which they frequently don't have to fight the case. With the loan set asides come unique lending concepts. Public assistance can be counted as income when applying for a loan as long as one is black or Hispanic. It gets worse. In most settlements DOJ requires a "non disclosure" clause so the public can't see how flimsy the case was that brought about the penalties. IBD has more.