This is flat-out wrong, and it should be embarrassing — and, more to the point, hugely concerning — that Bloomberg believed it.
Randy Kroszner, a conservative, GWB-appointee to the Fed, found no evidence that the Community Reinvestment Act, which outlawed redlining, was behind the 2008 crash. blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008… 
Bloomberg has been consistently wrong about the 2008 crisis. He blamed Congress for it a second time when he said that it happened because they also pushed Fannie and Freddie to lend to poor people. This is also demonstrably false. thinkprogress.org/mayor-bloomber…
The truth of the matter is that Fannie and Freddie were *losing market share* during the housing bubble. It was private lenders who were making most of the bad loans. Fannie and Freddie belatedly tried to get into this — which is why they also went bust. rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/blo…
Bloomberg, in other words, shows that it really is difficult to get someone to understand something when his salary selling terminals to Wall Street depends on his not understanding it.
Bloomberg's entire public persona is that he's just an evidence-based problem-solver. And yet he couldn't figure out an easy question like who was to blame for the 2008 crisis...
