I flere måneder har aviser og nyhetssendinger på TV omtalt boligkrisen i USA: Vi har sett reportasjer om familier som hadde flyttet inn i drømmehuset, men som så må selge og flytte ut fordi de ikke klarte å betjene gjelden: husdrømmen ble til et gjeldshelvete.

Poenget med reportasjene har åpenbart vært å vise at frihet og markedsøkonomi, som USA påståes å ha, er skyld i nedgang, brutte forventninger, fattigdom og krise.

Men hva er egentlig årsak til boligkrisen? Vi skal sitere fra en artikkel som klart og tydelig forklarer dette, men først gir vi en kort oppsummering: Krisen skyldes i hovedsak at myndighetene presset banker til å gi boliglån til familier som normalt ikke ville ha fått lån fordi de ikke var kredittverdige.

Hva hvis låntagerne ikke klarer å betale tilbake? Da vet bankens ledelse at den vi få hjelp av staten, slik at den egentlig ikke risikerer mye på å opptre uansvarlig.

Problemene skyldes altså ikke det frie marked, problemene skyldes at staten presset banker og låntagere inn i ordninger og avtaler de i et fritt marked ikke ville ha vært omfattet av, og av at bankene vet at går det galt så vil staten redde dem. Alt dette fører til en sterkt økende uansvarlighet på alle hold.

Vi siterer fra artikelen "Don’t Blame the Markets" av Jerry Bowyer, publisert i New York Sun 18. april:

“The government compels banks to make loans in poor neighborhoods even if the applicants are not considered prime borrowers. You may not know about that because the Community Reinvestment Act is not exactly a household (excuse the pun) name.

But the commercial banks do know about it. They have a CRA department. They get a CRA rating. They know that the way to get a high CRA rating is to make loans to poor applicants or in poor urban neighborhoods regardless of the financial prudence of the loans.

They know that if they don’t do this, they will be punished severely by the regulators when they try to make any major change which is dependent on regulatory approval. And they know that pretty much every major change a traditional bank makes is, in fact, subject to regulatory approval. So, they grit their teeth and stamp a big inky “yes" on an application which they know, according to traditional financial standards, deserves a “no."

Up until 1995 the Community Reinvestment Act was largely a requirement to support “community groups" in poor neighborhoods. Of course, this often meant left wing groups like ACORN, etc. But after 1995 the scope of the law was dramatically increased.

Over the strenuous objections of the banks themselves and some Republicans in Congress, CRA was renewed and modified in such a way that it gave far more power to the federal government to punish banks for not lending more widely in poor neighborhoods.

The classic “fair housing" laws from the Martin Luther King Jr. era of civil rights were deemed insufficient. Under CRA, not only were realtors required to sell to qualified buyers regardless of race, which they should have been, but banks were accused of a new kind of “financial redlining" if they didn’t provide the funds. Income, credit history, assets, debts were out. Urban neighborhoods were in. The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act pushed things along too by requiring banks to ask about and disclose the race of its mortgage applicants. In effect, banks were forced to provide the evidence of their own alleged discrimination.

Subprime loans to minority applicants exploded ten fold in the mid-1990s as a result. In fact the Clinton administration found a rapid increase in subprime loans in minority neighborhoods. Their principle worry was that, even then, not enough lending was going on in these communities. More was needed. And they got what they asked for.

Under New Deal-era regulatory rules of Glass-Steagall, commercial banks and investment banks were separated. When that act was repealed as part of banking deregulation in 1999, commercial banks and investment banks were able to merge, subject to approval by regulators.

However, the banks’ CRA rating was taken into account in the decision. This meant that a high CRA rating became an important prerequisite for mergers, which increased the pressure on the banks to make these risky loans. The banks also were given permission to put these loans into packages of securities that could then be sold into investment markets."

Dette skulle være tydelig nok: det er statlig innblanding i det frie marked som er skyld i boligkrisen i USA.

Hadde man hatt et fritt marked ville levestandarden stige for alle over tid. Stalige inngrep fører til at noen får det bedre på kort sikt og at alle får det verre på lang sikt. Det som er skjedd i boligkrisen i USA bekrefter dette enda en gang.