A Most Unpretty Picture
In its latest blast on racial equity, the Treasury Department‘s Office of Economic Policy has issued a blog post cataloguing racial disparities in residential-mortgage finance. None of it is news – indeed, the post goes light on key questions such as refi disparities and small-balance loans. As with most such blog posts, it’s clearly the work of industrious interns set to scrivening by higher-ups with an eye on a political prize. Still, at a time of high-pressure lobbying to get some sort of housing-relief legislation in the lame-duck, these data will be powerfully deployed by those using racial-equity arguments to advance the left-behind housing provisions of Biden’s Build Back Better omnibus.