The mortgage meltdown, illegal immigration, and pandering politicians.

Nancy Mathis has written a very thoughtful and well-researched piece on the role that illegal immigrants — and those who prey on them (citizens and fellow Hispanics) — are playing in the enormously costly subprime mortgage collapse. She also makes clear how politicians failed to take any action in order to keep from offending Hispanics:

The tenor of the discussion in the mainstream media is to blame the local communities that discourage illegal immigrants. And that is very mistaken. The illegals committed a crime by entering this country without documentation. Other Hispanics committed fraud by luring their fellow Latinos into mortgage arrangements that were destined to fail, and by misrepresenting credit credentials to the lending institutions. Immigrant homeowners of record violated the local zoning laws. Employers of these illegals were complicit by hiring them against federal law. The mortgage sellers were duplicitous in lending money on paper to clients who clearly did not qualify. The banks were unscrupulous, knowing that they could skim a profit and package and resell the paper before the scheme crashed. The Wall Street buyers of the paper defrauded their investors by making bad [judgments] in buying these mortgage packages from the banks.

Now, in the face of all this corruption, our federal government has reached its sticky-fingered hands into all of our pockets for the billions of dollars needed to keep these reprehensible outfits afloat.

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So, the bottom line is this: Almost everyone involved in this mess was dishonest. Our governments — federal, state, and local — let it happen because the politicians were pandering to the Latino vote. Now we are all supposed to shell out to bail them out, because they threaten us with the loss of our retirement pensions and devaluation of our other assets. Is no one outraged?

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The no-money-down mortgage market was just a giant Ponzi scheme with a window dressing of mortgage paper. It collapsed. And, thanks to the power brokers on Wall Street, the swindlers were rewarded and the American taxpayers were extorted. Far from protecting us, our government was complicit. And the housing market for illegal immigrants played a pivotal role. The corporate greed and endemic irresponsibility of major financial institutions were the cause of the so-called “meltdown,” but the illegal aliens were the trigger and the catalyst.

I have only one reservation. Mathis quotes Charles Morris, an author who referred negatively to "free-market zealotry." He otherwise seems to have correctly predicted this meltdown but I am not highlighting Mathis's piece because I endorse what he thinks is "free-market zealotry." Ours is already a highly regulated economy and I take such sentiments about economic freedom with a grain of salt.

I admit I am not a person who understand the world of banking and finance and it may be that there is some salutary government corrective action that can be made. However, I have my doubts about how any government "improvements" would turn out. Milton Friedman thought that, on balance, all the programs and agencies of the New Deal actually prolonged the Depression. Never underestimate the ability of politicians to take a problem and make it worse. After, that is, causing the problem in the first place.

And, if the wise men of government are that wise, why didn't they see the problem developing?

Bottom line, I don't think Mathis quoted him to make a point about "free-market zealotry." On the contrary, she thinks the government was complicit in all of this. I'm just saying count me out when it comes to crying about "free-market zealotry."

Statist zealotry has caused more death and destruction in the history of man by several orders of magnitude. That's a better conceptual place to start from. If you've got to fool with the economy, better to start off with a screwdriver or scalpel than a wrecking ball. A "major overhaul" we can do without.

Unless it's a major overhaul of our sappy "nationofimmigrant" views. Holy mother of pearl. TV soap operas look like monumental works of the theater compared to the mawkish sentiments that will issue eo instante from the mouths of citizens on the sacred, immutable role that immigration has played and must play in our nation. Forever.

"Behind the Mortgage Meltdown." By Nancy Matthis, American Daughter, April 1, 2008.