HonestJon,
Yes, I agree that there were willing participants and don’t buy the notion that banks were significantly forced into this by the government. But you’re seriously understating the government’s role, especially the embodiment of their policies through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Government intervention always stacks-the-deck to create winners and losers, so it doesn’t actually reduce the government’s culpability to point out that people have made money. The government’s concerted effort to promote lending to low-income Americans and the ‘too big to fail’ mentality has created opportunity for many people to make easy money, and to offload the consequences of risk-taking to tax payers. This notion that we need to blame law-abiding opportunists for their greed would be no different than blaming individuals for winning the lottery. It’s the game that is flawed, not the players. The ‘greedy execs’ argument is just socialist propaganda.
Big lie #1 is that this economic meltdown was caused by Bush’s failed economic policies. Whatever the argument you want to make about lack of regulation can be pointed squarely at the Democrats who invariably shielded the sub-prime market from the regulators. Similarly, you can applaud Bush’s efforts over the past eight years, fighting to shield taxpayers from this outcome. If you want to criticize Bush, then do so because he failed in his efforts, due to his lack of skill as a politician. Or blame him for his own administration’s deficits.
Big lie #2 is to say that this economic meltdown is the result of the free market, and people being motivated to make money (ie. greed). I like T’s summary (comment 13), but would add that forcing low interest rates also contributed to the housing bubble. But that final point is sort of moot since the US has little choice but to keep interest rates low.
