Greenlining? Or Whitewashing?

by Little Miss Attila on March 1, 2011

Zombie finds that all roads lead to Berkeley, California. Especially the road that led to an Oscar for the documentary Inside Job . . . which skips over the role of the Bay Area’s Greenlining Institute:

[G]roups like the Greenlining Institute saw the banks as potential agents of economic restructuring: If banks could be forced to grant homeownership to poor people, then that would be the first step for the lower classes to climb out of poverty, since everyone knows that owning one’s own home instills a sense of pride, self-worth, and self-reliance.

And so, using the bullying tactics described above (and in the original article which first inspired my post), the Greenlining Institute (and similar groups) twisted the banks’ arms to make risky loans, for the purpose of “social justice,” to use the activists’ own terminology.

Forced into this situation, the banks then went to great lengths to disguise the risk they had foolishly assumed; to fob the bad loans off on unsuspecting other investors, they devised convoluted financial instruments that obscured the danger of the investments; and so on.

It is these after-the-fact shenanigans that Inside Job focuses on. And like any good propaganda, it’s effective because it’s technically true: Everything shown in the film pretty much did happen as depicted. But here’s the key point: It may be true, but it’s irrelevant. The filmmakers are focusing on the glorious gory details of the financial explosion caused by the subprime loan crisis, but they aren’t showing you who lit the fuse.

The meltdown was not caused by the bankers who mislabeled their risky debt; the economy would have collapsed no matter who was holding the bag when it all went sour. The only crime committed by the villains depicted in Inside Job was to make sure they weren’t personally liable when all those bad investments went kablooey.

It’s clever to stir up populist outrage against the fatcats who tried to enrich themselves when everyone else went broke. Who doesn’t hate devious fatcats? Even I hate them. But in this case I know that they didn’t cause the recession: they merely tried to profit from it. Because that’s what fatcats do: They try to profit from anything, in any financial climate. That’s what makes them fatcats.

If you look at the Greenlining Institute’s Web site nowadays, you won’t find much mention of redlining and housing discrimination; in recent years, Greenlining has expanded its focus to become a general-purpose left-wing advocacy group, and now advertises its “Leadership Academy” to groom the next generation of behind-the-scenes radical activists, and concentrates on a much broader push to fundamentally alter American society.

But most Americans will never know any of this. Inside Job dominates the headlines, and the thesis it puts forth is the accepted wisdom of an angry nation.

Meanwhile, Waiting for Superman didn’t even get nominated.

But I’m criticized for harping on the entertainment industry’s left-wing bias, which I’m told is not that bad, really . . . after all, in the Bad Old Days, “the blacklist was written down!

Written down. That’s bad stuff, right there. Much better if it had been committed to film.

I know all about your inside jobs.

{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }

ponce March 1, 2011 at 7:46 pm

Glenn Beck’s theory that our multi-trillion dollar economic meltdown happened because a few poor, dusky Americans got home loans again?

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Darrell March 1, 2011 at 8:34 pm

Translated ponce: “I’m a Leftist idiot.”

Reply

ponce March 1, 2011 at 8:38 pm

Shorter Purrel: “I’m a charter member of the Rich are Never Wrong Party”

Reply

Darrell March 1, 2011 at 9:25 pm

The rich are often wrong. Take Warren Buffett or the Hollywood crowd. . .please.

Reply

Richard March 2, 2011 at 4:09 pm

A good liberal never lets actual facts interfere with their hallowed propaganda.
As they say – “Ignorance is bliss.”

Reply

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