Did Left-Wing Groups Bring Down IndyMac?

Left-wing pressure groups like the Center for Responsible Lending played a role in bringing down Indymac, according to commentator Jerry Bowyer.

Around the same time Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York) questioned the financial viability of the California-based bank, an event the Office of Thrift Supervision said gave “the bank a heart attack,” the Center for Responsible Lending exacerbated the situation. As Bowyer writes:

Indymac has been under attack from the hard left. The Center for Responsible Lending issued an attack on Indymac within a few days of Schumer’s letter. CRL is part of a small army of left of center ‘research’ groups, community organizers, and public interest law firms who make their living accusing home lenders of racial redlining and predatory lending. On June 20th the Center accused Indymac of unfair practices regarding minority borrowers.

A suspicious person might think that a network of lefty attack groups proficient in bank bashing and frequently funded by trial lawyers and short-sellers, coordinated their activities with a law firm on the hunt and a Senator who works closely with the network.

On the other hand, maybe it is a coincidence that CRL and Sen. Schumer attacked the same bank in the same week. Maybe he didn’t know about the CRL report, nor CRL about his letter. Maybe the community group didn’t know about the trial-lawyer class action lawsuit which was launched against Indy a couple of weeks before all of this started.

Yeah, right.

The market-haters at the Center, which we wrote about in 2007, 2006, and 2005, have been trying to restrict your financial freedoms for years. Maybe Indymac, unlike the foundations that recently caved in to the shakedown artists at California’s Greenlining Institute, refused to pay protection money.

The Center for Responsible Lending has received grants from the usual suspects on the philanthropic left: Open Society Institute ($100,000 from 2003 to 2005), the Ford Foundation ($100,000 in 2003), the Rockefeller Foundation ($150,000 in 2002), and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation ($500,000 in 2002).