Some 'white, blue-eyed' bankers for Lula
"This was a crisis fostered and boosted by the irrational behaviour of people that are white and blue eyed," says Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva.
Challenged about his claims, Lula responded: "I only record what I see in the press. I am not acquainted with a single black banker." Source
So here are a couple of black swans:
Stan O'Neal - "He became president of [Merrill Lynch] in 2001 in a palace intrigue that eventually led to the early ouster of his predecessor and one-time mentor David Komansky [3]. By 2003, he was CEO and chairman.[1] He was the first African American to hold such a high position on Wall Street".
And Franklin Raines - "In accordance with the mission of Fannie Mae to enable home ownership by a greater proportion of the population, Franklin Raines, while Chairman and CEO, began a pilot program in 1999 to issue bank loans to individuals with low to moderate income, and to ease credit requirements on loans that Fannie Mae purchased from banks. Raines promoted the program saying that it would allow consumers who were "a notch below what our current underwriting has required" to get home loans. The move was intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners.[15] Some observers have noted that the expansion of easy credit to home buyers with a lesser ability to pay them back was one of the major contributing factors to the subprime mortgage crisis".
As a coda to this, a nice lady from the BBC world service contacted me about appearing on a phone in about the issues raised by this, and we had a briefish chat. However, she said that the phone-in would be bumped if something bigger came up, which was perhaps a euphemism for my thoughts being insufficiently interesting. Anyway, the world was spared the input of 'William from Croydon'. Just as well, perhaps.
Challenged about his claims, Lula responded: "I only record what I see in the press. I am not acquainted with a single black banker." Source
So here are a couple of black swans:
Stan O'Neal - "He became president of [Merrill Lynch] in 2001 in a palace intrigue that eventually led to the early ouster of his predecessor and one-time mentor David Komansky [3]. By 2003, he was CEO and chairman.[1] He was the first African American to hold such a high position on Wall Street".
And Franklin Raines - "In accordance with the mission of Fannie Mae to enable home ownership by a greater proportion of the population, Franklin Raines, while Chairman and CEO, began a pilot program in 1999 to issue bank loans to individuals with low to moderate income, and to ease credit requirements on loans that Fannie Mae purchased from banks. Raines promoted the program saying that it would allow consumers who were "a notch below what our current underwriting has required" to get home loans. The move was intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners.[15] Some observers have noted that the expansion of easy credit to home buyers with a lesser ability to pay them back was one of the major contributing factors to the subprime mortgage crisis".
As a coda to this, a nice lady from the BBC world service contacted me about appearing on a phone in about the issues raised by this, and we had a briefish chat. However, she said that the phone-in would be bumped if something bigger came up, which was perhaps a euphemism for my thoughts being insufficiently interesting. Anyway, the world was spared the input of 'William from Croydon'. Just as well, perhaps.
Labels: idiots, racial minefields, the recession
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