Shame where the shame belongs
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008Thank goodness that some commentators, at least, are cutting through the B.S. and explaining how we got into this subprime meltdown mess.
Barney Frank’s talking points notwithstanding, mortgage lenders didn’t wake up one fine day deciding to junk long-held standards of creditworthiness in order to make ill-advised loans to unqualified borrowers. It would be closer to the truth to say they woke up to find the government twisting their arms and demanding that they do so - or else.
This is Jeff Jacoby writing in the Boston Globe, and it’s a lucid, hyperlinked piece (i.e., not just raw assertions but backed by actual FACTS) that lays out the entire history of the subprime mortgage debacle.
You can’t solve a problem unless you correctly identify the cause. Blaming Wall Street and the Republicans is nauseating for precisely this reason: it muddles American’s ability to understand why this all happened in the first place.
Let’s hope more of this comes out so that we can get our thinking straight before November.