Overshadowed by the political posturing of an epic Capitol Hill battle over funding priorities was news of an agreement between federal officials and rouge mortgage agency Countrywide Financial.
That announced agreement produced a historic $335 million settlement regarding massive discrimination by Countrywide against minorities seeking mortgages.
According to U.S. Justice Department officials Countrywide — once America’s largest single-family mortgage lender — charged non-whites higher fees and shunted them into costlier mortgages than whites from 2004 to 2008.
Now, under the standard terms of civil settlements, Countrywide does not admit that it did what it did: discriminate against minorities.
But excluding ugly race-based discrimination as Countrywide pretends, what explains that firm persistently slamming high income earning non-whites with solid credit into predatory adjustable rate mortgages while giving more favorable treatment to whites with lesser income and worse credit histories?
The time frame of Countrywide’s alleged skullduggery covers the period of the greatest loss of wealth in the histories of America’s Black and Latino communities.
During that time frame Blacks and Hispanics lost in excess of $350 billion in wealth from just foreclosures and home value depreciations triggered by foreclosures, according to an array of expert examinations.
Other consequences roiling within this wealth loss is a widening of the wealth gaps between whites and non-whites in America.
In 2005 that gap was ten times while by 2010 that gap increased to nearly twenty times with the average white family having $113,000 in wealth compared to $6,300 for Hispanics and $5,700 for black families.
While Countrywide, now owned by Bank of America, was not the sole cause of that historically high wealth loss (a.k.a. fraudulent theft), it was a major player.
And as a major player, here’s a major rub: Few, if any, responsible for that wealth loss have faced prosecution, much less endured imprisonment for their misdeeds.
Yet, during that 2004-to-2008 time frame tens of thousands of non-whites ended up in federal and state prisons across America for crimes (and false convictions) of far less devastation than those committed by economic fraudsters.
Another major story overshadowed by the recent Washington wrangling over extending payroll tax cuts (really siphoning money from Social Security) and extending unemployment benefits to those still eligible involved news that federal prosecutors back away from pressing cases against financial big-shots because it’s allegedly too hard to prove “criminal intent.”
The same feds that can find (and/or manufacture) criminal intent from the most innocent of acts among the poor to facilitate criminal charges suddenly fall stupid when it comes to finding comparable intent among fraudsters who can afford the best defense money can buy to exploit a presumption unavailable to the poor.
That presumption respected by judges and juries is that the wealthy are innocent even when proven guilty.
The entrenchment of extreme economic inequities symbolized by the 99 percent vs. 1 percent is one of the things clearly exposed during Year 2011.
The subtle and in-your-face favoring of the wealthy prompted unprecedented resistance in 2011.
In Philadelphia criticisms were raised by a few (unfortunately too few) over this city government’s failure to collect the School Income Tax with the same aggressiveness as property taxes for public school funding.
That Income Tax impacting “toys’” of the wealthy like bonds, stocks and trusts raked in less income that the city’s liquor-by-the-drink tax, another income sources siphoning revenue disproportionately from the less wealthy.
That exposure of economic inequities and companion political corruption during 2011 drove the “Occupy” movements across the U.S. and other countries plus spurring pro-democracy revolts in many Arab nations.
“People are trying to take power from the government because the government is just about helping the rich make more money,” said Nuage Noire, a Black man participating in Occupy Paris, during an interview a few weeks ago.
“The way the government operates is not good for people because it costs too much just to live,” said Noire, as fellow Occupy participates cleaned their site at La Defense, the showcase major business district containing most of the tallest buildings in the French capital.
But while folks finally started hearing the realities of economic inequities they still were not listening to the race-based rhythms of those inequities cited for decades by Blacks.
The 1951 petition to the United Nations charging the U.S. government with genocide against African-Americans pointedly identified “monopoly capital [as] the prime mover” in the mammoth conspiracy of genocide.
“While monopoly’s immediate interest is profit, its long term aim is keeping the political and economic control it now enjoys over the American people and the American government through emasculating democratic mass movements by disfranchising millions and setting one group of Americans over and against others.”
Those behind that genocide petition, progressive Blacks and whites, endured cavalier dismissal then and now with critics blasting them as communists.
Even earlier this year a Princeton Black History professor who should know better use communist to demean when referencing petitioners who included respected activist Mary Church Terrell and then lawyer/later U.S. Congressman George Crockett.
In 2011 with millions of dollars now legally flowing into political campaigns to sway outcomes, authorities unleashing SWAT cops on peaceful Occupy protestors and media pundits aligned with the wealthy purveying racist divisiveness the accuracy of assertions in the 1951 genocide petition remain evident…for those who want to see…
Hopefully, clarity will continue in 2012…
Linn Washington Jr. is a graduate of the Yale Law Fellowship Program.
