That is just absolutely not true. What are you basing that statement on? The market is not racist, but people certainly can be. It is only within the last 15 years or so that predictive modeling became the predominant method of determining credit worthiness. Before that time, almost all of the decisions were made by people, who had their own predjudices. Even today, in many industries and companies, a lot of loan underwriting is done by people's judgements, which leads to a whole ot of inefficiencies.

I don't mean this as a rude question, I am just trying to get where you are coming from. Do you have a history in consumer lending?

Is it a market inefficiency for a company to have a policy not to hire niggers, FM?

FM, while you are (maybe) replying to my other posts, here are some related thoughts. I am a strong believer in the power of free markets, but we have plenty of examples where they have not fixed racial problems:

- Most economists I have read agree that slavery in the antebellum South was not economically sound (it would have been more efficient to pay workers). Why did it continue?

- It certainly would have been more profitable for businesses during the Jim Crow area to serve all people, regardless of their color, yet they didn't. Why did the market not fix that?

- In the specific case of redlining, why did poor white areas not get redlined nearly as much as comparable black areas? I'll tell you right now, it was not because they paid their loans better.

your race baiting is true to form. That has nothing to do with the discussion at hand and you know it.

Bullshit. If a bank has a policy to not give loans to any black person or black-owned business, is that a good thing? Is that ok?

I used to be of the opinion that a business could do whatever it wanted. If it wanted to hang a sign out front "NO COLOREDS", that was ok. Not hire minorities? Ok. No mortgages to blacks? Ok. I argued the market would take care of it. I'm not of the same opinion anymore.

I'd love to see data to substantiate that.

But before we gett to far afield into redlining, the premise of my post is that the government forcing banks to make risky loans is what started this. Agree or not?

Of course not. That is a racist view. But if socioeconomic data says zipcode X is a high risk place to lend money, regardless of cause, is that racist? So what if it HAPPENS to be a pre-dominantly black area?

Yes it is, because any model that only uses location is a DUMB model.

So you think banks should be required to make loans in say ... Fair Park?

Even though it's a war zone full of crack houses, etc.?