The left is slowly beginning to wrap their heads around the fact that it was too mush government intervention in the market, not too little, that caused the current financial crisis. In an article at Slate defending government subsidization of subprime loans, Daniel Gross writes: Let’s be honest. Fannie and …
Defending $150 billion worth of unrelated tax benefits that Congress stuffed into the already $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) told the International Herald Tribune: “If you don’t want politics in this process, you probably shouldn’t be handing it over to 535 politicians. That’s democracy.” We …
When a Nobel Prize-winning economist tells you something is too complicated to understand, pay attention. That is just what Nobel Laureate Gary Becker said about the financial crisis in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal. The main problem with the modern financial system based on widespread use of derivatives and securitization is …
The left really has no idea what free markets are. Witness Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson who wrote a column last week blaming the current credit crisis on ‘unregulated capitalism’ and ‘laissez faire’ policies. According to Merriam-Webster, ‘laissez faire’ means: “a doctrine opposing governmental interference in economic affairs beyond the …
George Mason University economics professor Russell Roberts writes in today’s Wall Street Journal: Beginning in 1992, Congress pushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase their purchases of mortgages going to low and moderate income borrowers. For 1996, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) gave Fannie and Freddie …
Campaigning in Colorado yesterday Barack Obama blamed the financial crisis on “a culture of deregulation.” No, we don’t know what this means either. Pressed for specifics, some on the left manage to identify the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley law as the deregulation source for all our problems. But as we have detailed …
There is no doubt that past government intervention in the market, particularly by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is largely to blame for the current financial turmoil. And while past government intervention cannot be used to justify further government interference, we also have to ask how much unnecessary pain the …
