Thursday, June 3, 2010

Never Forget

This Wall Street Journal column reminds us of one of the key ingredients of the financial crisis: the opposition by Democrats to limiting the size of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Democrats used the power of the filibuster in the Senate to oppose reforms of Fannie and Freddie, because they wanted those firms to aggressively lend money to subprime borrowers to promote home ownership among poorer Americans. Barack Obama was voted with his fellow Democrats against reforms that would have cut taxpayer losses and lessened the extent of the financial crisis.

In other words, Democratic opposition to reforms were directly related to the cause of the crisis: the extension of too much credit to subprime mortgages. Or as Barney Frank put it, he wanted to "roll the dice" with Fannie and Freddie.

Trillions of dollars of losses later, massive unemployment, government bailouts, the socialization of greater swaths of American industry, and looming massive tax increases are the result.

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