08 May 2009

Blame Bush for Housing Bubble? Not Smart

Blaming Bush for everything that is wrong with the world is becoming an entertaining habit for those with nothing important to do. The rest of us are starting to understand that many of the critical problems we are forced to deal with had their origins long before Bush. By focusing on Bush, people are distracted from the far greater destruction being committed right under their noses.
In December, the New York Times published a 5,100-word article charging that the Bush administration’s housing policies had “stoked” the foreclosure crisis—and thus the financial meltdown. By pushing for lax lending standards, encouraging government enterprises to make mortgages more available, and leaning on private lenders to come up with innovative ways to lend to ever more Americans—using “the mighty muscle of the federal government,” as the president himself put it—Bush had lured millions of people into bad mortgages that they ultimately couldn’t afford, the Times said.

Yet almost everything that the Times accused the Bush administration of doing has been pursued many times by earlier administrations, both Democratic and Republican—and often with calamitous results. The Times’s analysis exemplified our collective amnesia about Washington’s repeated attempts to expand homeownership and the disasters they’ve caused. The ideal of homeownership has become so sacrosanct, it seems, that we never learn from these disasters. Instead, we clean them up and then—as if under some strange compulsion—set in motion the mechanisms of the next housing catastrophe.

And that’s exactly what we’re doing once again. As Washington grapples with the current mortgage crisis, advocates from both parties are already warning the feds not to relax their commitment to expanding homeownership—even if that means reviving the very kinds of programs and institutions that got us into trouble. Not even the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression can cure us of our obsessive housing disorder. _CityJournal
Unlikely bedfellows from Krugman to Sailer to Kos push at their restraints to blame Bush for long lists of mis-steps and contretemps of which other presidents -- including the current one -- are far more guilty. And the Democratic Congress? The Congressional wrecking ball gets a free pass from the chattering class. People are distracted by the blame game, and don't notice that the Obama /Pelosi reich is pumping up the bubble once again.

Will you stop blaming Bush long enough to notice that you are being set up for yet another round of "you've just been had?" Probably not, as long as the chatterers and wankers keep the blame game going at full volume. But watch your back. While being entertained by the wanksters, you are about to be buggered from behind without even the courtesy of KY jelly.

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4 Comments:

Blogger yamahaeleven said...

Bush is just a convenient whipping boy, he doesn't have a platform from which to defend himself.

All politicians do exactly the same thing, they just change the fringe on the pillow a bit:

http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/tax-and-economy/friedrich-hayek-200905083451/

Friday, 08 May, 2009  
Blogger yamahaeleven said...

Of course, there is always the exceptions that prove the rule, Thatcher and Reagan.

Friday, 08 May, 2009  
Blogger kurt9 said...

Bush was a part of the problem. He pushed the idea of no-down payment mortgages. Steve Sailor has written extensively about this. It is certainly true that the impetus for the housing bubble was the CRA, congressional democrats, and Clinton. However, both Bush I and Bush II were in the tank on this.

There was a group of 25 republican Senators who pushed for more regulation and control of Freddie and Fannie, but they were rebuffed by ALL of the congression democrats as well as the other half of the congressional republicans. In any case, both Bush I and II were RINO's (republican in name only).

Friday, 08 May, 2009  
Blogger al fin said...

Yes, in a trivial sense of course, like all other presidents who bought into the same lie that 90 % of the public still believes.

That's superficial thinking, Kurt. Get down to the street level where bankers' arms are twisted to make bad loans, and who do you find? ACORN, community organizers, corrupt congressmen, and legal and media wankers.

Anyone who wants to live in the present needs to wake up and clear the decks. The next scene will not be one for pastoral music.

People living in the trivial past are going to get the shaft big time.

Saturday, 09 May, 2009  

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“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” _George Orwell

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