You ready for "Mortgage Meltdown, part two"?

It's getting harder to read articles like the one at the link below without grabbing the heavy weapons and heading for the compound.

The story: Eric Holder's department of Injustice "has asked several banks to relax their mortgage underwriting standards and approve [mortgage] loans for minorities with poor credit."

Now, to understand what that quote actually means you can't just read it literally. Instead you need to understand that when the DOI "asks" a bank to do something, there's a huge implied threat there: "If you don't, you can expect expensive trouble."

Ah, I see some of my liberal friends think I just make this up. Okay, consider this:

As part of settlement deals, prosecutors have required banks to sign "nondisclosure agreements" barring them from talking about the methods used to allege discrimination. Bank lawyers contend the prosecutors are trying to hide the shaky legal grounds on which the cases are built.

"They want you to sign something saying you agree, [as a condition of a settlement], that you won't disclose what their theories were. That's because their theories...wouldn't stand the light of day."

One such theory is that if different percentages of loan applications are approved for applicants of different races, it proves racial discrimination — even if time-proven risk factors such as credit scores and whether an applicant is making a downpayment account for the difference.

In other words, they're looking for exact equality of outcome, regardless of whether an applicant is a good credit risk.

Under this same theory, banks have been accused of racial discrimination for failing to open branches or aggressively market mortgages in black neighborhoods.

Has everyone in America had a lobotomy recently? I mean, didn't the nation just go through a "mortgage industry meltdown" about two years ago, because the federal government forced banks to extend mortgages to people who clearly were extremely unlikely to be able to make the payments?

Am I the only one left who remembers the banking industry acronym "ninja loan?" "No income, no job, no assets"--but higher management said "Approve 'em", because it was that or get sued down by the Feds.

For example, the government ordered Midwest BankCentre to set aside almost $1 million in "special financing" for residents living in predominantly black areas of St. Louis. The program includes originating conventional home loans at fixed, prime rates for African-American borrowers "who would ordinarily not qualify for such rates for reasons including the lack of required credit quality, income or down payment."

Could it be any more clear? Govt was ordering the bank to grant best-rate mortgages to people who would not ordinarily qualify for such rates due to poor credit, income or lack of a downpayment. Recipe for disaster, part 2.

The same federal order, signed last month, praises Midwest for adopting "less stringent underwriting criteria" while under investigation. "Less stringent criteria" is another way of saying "giving mortgages to unqualified applicants." Wonderful.

Well Sparky, looks like we're taking a second trip down that same ruinous path, eh? Difference is, when it happened the first time no one outside the industry had a clue what was going on, so no one could believe things were as bad as the insiders were saying.

But this time we've had the experience--and recently. We know the effects of that policy. If you let Holder and the DOI get away with it, don't come complaining that you didn't know Round Two was coming.

Lord, is anyone else awake out there?