Letters

A recent letter by Andrea Klausner [“History Repeating,” Letters, April 7] providing her version of history and the Democratic Party’s fiscal achievements was risible. I thought I was reading the National Lampoon.

If she was truly looking for a history lesson, she would have researched “Saturday Night Live’s” Dan Aykroyd parodies of Jimmy Carter back when it was still legal to spoof liberals. The Carter years enjoyed double-digit inflation, mortgage rates in excess of 20 percent and gas shortages that prompted “Jimmy” to announce during a national address that thermostats should be rolled back to 55 degrees. Gas prices were considered astronomical at the time, and lines extended for many blocks, with long waits that could take an hour to fill up your gas tank.

Does any of this ring a bell as Ms. Klausner lauds Biden’s economic policies?

A Carter policy initiated the sub-prime crisis under the Community Reinvestment Act, which encouraged loans to people with low income and little credit. This was furthered along during the Clinton years, when loans were given to people who could never possibly afford their mortgages. Defaults were rampant, but the same bankrupt borrowers would apply yet again for another mortgage and receive that mortgage. I remember reading that one Latino applicant defaulted four times, all in the name of a misguided policy encouraging equity without considering the ability to pay.

This policy came to a head during the G.W. Bush years, when, to his credit (arguably his only credit), he questioned the practice, but it was too late by then — the economy tanked by 2008.

The subsequent Obama years encompassed the longest financial downturn since the Great Depression. Throughout his term, lending money to people wholly incapable of repayment became weaponized through “disparate impact.” This policy penalized banks for lending money to minorities based on their ability to pay. Instead, its sole basis was the proportional percentage of minorities to whites in any given neighborhood.

In other words, you could be flat broke, but the bank had to lend money to you if you were a minority, or the banks faced potential lawsuits brought by Attorney General Eric Holder under disparate impact.

This eventually imposed onerous fines and settlement fees on offending banks. These fines resulted in millions lost by lending institutions that were simply trying to prevent the same causes of the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the first place.

Obama whined about inheriting a mess but continued the policy of lending to people who could not possibly afford to repay their obligations.

Promoted by the liberal left, Biden’s “Modern Monetary Policy” endorses printing more and more money to spend our way out of inflation, Jimmy Carter redux.

See how well it’s working? History truly does repeat.

John Porta

Westhampton