Nyt Bush To Blame For Mortgage Meltdown - Road to the Middle Class

LET’S say it up front. President Bush was not early enough or firm enough in calling a halt to the housing boom/bubble. For some years, it is clear, Bush just kept on the policy of mortgage-at-any-cost (especially to minorities) which has been the policy of the US government for decades.

But you’d have to have your head in a liberal bell jar to write a news story about the housing crisis and not mention “Community Reinvestment Act.” You’d have to try really hard not to mention the word “Dodd.” You’d have to try really hard not to mention the bullying of the banks by federal housing officials.

But The New York Times reporters Jo Becker, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Stephen Labaton managed it.

They introduce Franklin Raines as a helpless victim of Bush’s policies:

[Raines, once] Fannie’s chief executive, has fond memories of visiting Mr. Bush in the Oval Office and flying aboard Air Force One to a housing event. "They loved us," he said.

But the reporters don’t mention the congressional hearings in 2004 when Republicans were accused of being racists for criticizing the performance of Raines at Fannie Mae.

“It was not until 2003,” the Times complains, “when Freddie became embroiled in an accounting scandal, that the White House took on the companies in earnest.”

Well Geewillikins, reporters and reporterettes, if the White House had succeeded in reining in Fannie and Freddie back in 2003, we would all be home free.

But they didn’t. They couldn’t. And the reason is Democrats in Congress like Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA). And the reason is the law: the Community Reinvestment Act that more or less forced banks to loan money to poor credit risks.

There’s a good side and a bad side to this sand-box journalism and blatant bias. The good side is that these journalists probably really don’t know what they are talking about. That means that New York Times readers won’t either. As political partisans, we gotta love that.

But the bad side is that the educated elite of the nation—let alone the ordinary Americans who get their news from the educated elite—still don’t have a clue, and may never have a clue about what hit us.

If you can’t get off the Democratic talking points of greedy banks and lax “de-regulation” then you haven’t learned the lesson. And that means that ordinary Americans are going to be forced to go through the whole thing again.

But who cares, as long as the good guys get reelected?

Yes. We are conservatives, and we do care.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.