Mike Konczal tries to kill the lie that won’t die:
A recent paper found that while the CRA might have introduced slightly larger risks in lending portfolios, extra loans done to meet CRA compliance weren’t more likely to have higher interest rates, lower loan-to-value, or be balloon/interest-only/jumbo/buy-down mortgages, or hold other subprime characteristics. So it is unlikely that the CRA was priming the pump for subprime, or subtly encouraging subprime mortgages to be made by private lenders.
