Greensboro News and Record Editorial: How to straddle a fence, appease political and business advertisers and not take a stand in 409 words of uninformed, oxymoronic rhetoric targeted at what they may likely consider an uneducated readership, otherwise, why would they publish such conciliatory drivel?

Opening loan pipeline requires safeguards

 

Rep. Brad Miller…was joined by Reps. David Price of Chapel Hill and Bob Etheridge of Lillington at a recent jobs roundtable in Durham where Triangle-area business people complained bitterly that banks aren't yet coming across with much-needed loans.

 

The inability of businesses to get credit, they said, has hit the state's home-building industry particularly hard…

 

An official of the N.C. Homebuilders Association warned, "We are not going to get out of this mess until folks make prudent loans and extend credit."

 

Points well taken. However, there must be measures in place assuring that the seeds aren't being sown for the next real-estate debacle.

 

…a sustainable turnaround won't happen unless credit begins flowing once again and more freely.

 

…But along with the loosening up of tight credit must come tougher lending controls…

 

Easy credit that fueled the housing bubble meltdown, a subprime crisis and liquidity crunch all share the blame for the lingering Great Recession and stagnant job market.

 

Making more credit available in 2010 must be accompanied by safeguards against predatory lending practices, speculative over-building, unregulated derivative investments and risky adjustable loans to unqualified potential home buyers.

 

Economic recovery will be sidetracked without a healthy infusion of capital…

 

On a more positive note, roundtable attendees predicted that entrepreneurial endeavors associated with health services and "green" businesses will lead the way in job creation, provided they can get loans…

 

The hard lesson is that simply pumping money into the credit pipeline isn't the answer to a complex problem.

 

Greensboro News and Record Editorial Board, December 18, 2009