When intentions aren't good enough

Back in the late '90s, it was brought to the wizards of Washington's attention that not everyone was getting approved for loans and mortgages.

It seems those with lower credit ratings were getting asked to pay higher interest rates or in some cases getting turned down completely.

On the surface this would seem to be business as usual and the proper way to do said business if you wanted to minimize risk.

Most of the lawmakers out in Washington are career politicians or have law degrees. In either case, running a business is not their strong suit as the vast majority of them have never had to be responsible for making a private enterprise profitable.

Nonetheless, they felt it was time to fix this unjust situation.

The politicians in their never-ending quest to look like white knights called it racism and discrimination. The credit companies claim was it was based on credit rating and ability to repay.

I have no way of knowing if anyone was discriminated against. It has certainly happened in this country over the years. But as far as I know, your credit score doesn't have a section that designates race, religion or country of origin.

Regardless Clinton as well as other politicians on both sides of the aisle made it clear to credit companies that they better start making loans available to more people or there would be trouble.

Once again, they could all walk around the capital slapping each other on the back in a "Aren't we wonderful people: kind of way as they were making the American dream available to everybody.

So here we are, 10 years later with foreclosures at a record high, credit corporations in serious trouble, housing prices plummeting and the economy as a whole looking very unstable.

As far as I know, the people defaulting on loans come in all shapes, sizes and colors, which leads me to think that the entire matter may not have been racial and more a matter of bad credit risks are bad credit risks no matter how politicians spin it.

Once again, the phrase "Our intentions were good" is being used in Washington as it is too often when one of these shortsighted plans fail.

Marc Thomsen

Elk Grove Village