IBD: 'Progressive' Policies Hit Minority Wealth Hardest; Fan, Fred, and Dems to Blame

Well of course they do, and of course “progressive” policies are to blame, as a Tuesday evening Investors Business Daily editorial aptly details (bolds are mine):

… New Census data show that the recent economic crash has erased decades of minority gains in wealth. The net worth of whites is now 20 times higher than for blacks and 18 times higher than for Hispanics, both records.

For white households, the median net worth (assets minus liabilities) in 2009 was $113,149. That compares to $6,325 for Hispanics and $5,677 for black Americans.

… If nothing else, these data point out the failure of federal welfare and anti-poverty policies to do what they intended: eradicate wealth differences in our country.

Starting in 1964, when President Johnson launched the War on Poverty, a well-intentioned crusade to end poverty, the U.S. has spent an estimated $16 trillion trying to help the less well-off.

LBJ and other well-meaning Democratic politicians at the time also hoped that the burgeoning welfare state would make people more self-sufficient, a noble goal. It didn't work.

… while the U.S. has more than 70 means-tested welfare programs, the poverty rate today is higher than it was in the late 1960s.

How can that be? “(M)ost anti-poverty/welfare spending erodes work and marriage,” wrote Robert Rector, a Heritage Foundation economist, in a recent report. “As a result … low-income Americans are less capable of self-support than when the War on Poverty began.”

The most recent leg down in minority wealth is due almost entirely to America's massive housing market intervention — funded by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, overseen by HUD and pushed by influential Democrats. It has only made things worse.

Starting with President Clinton, the federal government coerced banks into making loans to uncreditworthy minority borrowers to boost homeownership.

The implicit subsidy in this arrangement was itself a form of welfare. When the housing market tanked, it was inevitable that those mostly minority households would have higher delinquency and default rates, and lose much of their wealth. That's what happened.

As to housing, President Obama was a prominent community-organizing, frontline advocate for the very policies which destroyed so much wealth and which, as IBD noted, disproportionately affected minority households.

Yet to most, he's still their hero, while the corrupt cronies who did the dirty work at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac not only remain filthy rich, but in many cases are still powerful Washington insiders.

More generally, the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy, the deep recession it created, and the pathetic “Rebound? What Rebound?” recovery which has followed, are Democratic Party creations which have disproportionately the poor and lower middle-class.

Con artists know that the best scams are the ones where the victims don't even realize that they've been taken. By that benchmark, Fan, Fred, and the Democratic Party have pulled off one of the most “successful” scams of all time.