It’s 2011 and the economy is still in the shitter. It’s really beyond disgusting at this point. Yes, Barney Frank and the Democrats were complicit in the meltdown. Even Barack Obama, stumbling across the crime scene after the fact, has played a significant role by letting the fraudsters go without prosecution.
Regardless you ‘spin’ it, the republicans bear a far greater share of the political blame. Deregulation was a GOP issue, signaled in by Gramm (R), Leach (R) and Bliley (R) and opposed by the majority of democrats in congress. It’s amazing to this day to think that Phil Gramm would have been McCain’s chief economic advisor. I mean, “What the Fuck?”
The politicians, however, were only partially responsible. They established the conditions to make fraud possible, but the principal perpetrators of the fraud itself were not employed by government. The financial industry ran the racket and profited obscenely while housing prices were soaring to unsustainable heights. And they did all this, building a leveraged house of cards, using our money, which is now lost or stolen.
What I would say to all the GOP spinners out there trying to rewrite history — financial deregulation was a GOP issue. It was Republican Party policy. It failed badly. Give it up already. But I don’t think it was the principal cause of the meltdown. That distinction belongs those who worked the fraud in the first place — principal management in the financial and real estate industries.
