The Ultimate Blame for the Mortgage Meltdown . . .

Many are in finger pointing mode at the moment with regards to our current financial crisis. I don't think the true culprit has yet been fingered, though. If you trace back the threads, and follow this back to the source, as I have done, you'll find indisputable proof that this crisis began with one group of people, a group that you'll be surprised as being responsible, but once I spell it out for you, will seem obvious in retrospect.

That group? Korean transmission makers from the late 80s, of course.

That's right, if Korean transmission makers of the late 80s had been more responsible in the kinds of transmissions they plopped into the Hyundai Excel none of this current mess would have happened.

That's because the roots of this began with the expansion of the CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) engaged in by the Clinton administration throughout the 90s. That engagement was based on follow through for campaign promises made by Clinton when he defeated Bush in '92. Clinton wouldn't have made those promises had it not been for his political grandstanding in the wake of the LA Riots of April '92. Those riots wouldn't have happened if those officers hadn't been acquitted in their criminal case for their rough treatment of Rodney King, and this is where the Korean transmission makers from the late 80s come into the picture.

The Hyundai Excel was a super cheap car, far cheaper than anything else on the market in the 80s (except the Yugo, but the Yugo was even crappier than the Excel). The Excel was a standard econobox mated to a somewhat inadequate engine, but they geared the transmission so that the car could go over 100 mph so long as you were going downhill or had a hurricane force tailwind. Had Rodney King not been speeding down the Sepulveda pass at speeds in excess of 100mph, the adrenaline levels of the cops that eventually stopped him would not have been nearly as high when he was finally confronted. Had the transmission been more responsibly geared, and he'd been travelling at 85mph instead of 100mph+, I posit that the officers would not have been as pumped or angry when they tussled with Mr. King. Instead of the international incident that followed in the wake of the videotaping of that traffic stop, it would have been just a routine case of a speeder who tried to run, and the cops would have been laughing at him for trying to outrun them in an Excel, instead of the adrenaline fueled frenzy that was caught on tape.

So, as you can see, a different transmission in the Excel King drove, a different result in that traffic stop, no beating, no riot, no riot, no campaign promise for an expanded CRA, no expansion of the CRA and threats by the Reno Justice Department to go after lenders for 'discrimination', and you wouldn't have the subprime boom encouraged by the Clinton administration and acquiesced to by Congress in the '90s.

It's all just one big chain of cause and effect, if you interrupt that chain at the beginning, the whole thing falls apart, so the ultimate blame for the current mortgage meltdown rests at the feet of Korean transmission makers of the late '80s.