Something has been puzzling me ever since the whole Freddie/Fannie debacle:
Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and every other leftist has been trying to convince us that this is “everyone’s” fault, that there is “blame to go around” and all that.
The dems have consistently portrayed the Republicans as mean, poor-hating richbots who have done nothing to help the poor, right?
So how can the Republicans be against the poor and at the same time are equally responsible for helping poor people who can’t afford them get mortgages they can’t pay for?
Because the poor getting loans being solely responsible for this disaster is not supportable, and not repeated outside the conservative talk show echo chamber. In that echo chamber the economy was great last year until the bust, then it was CRA that caused the bust. The big problem the general public got in on the boom buying rentals and re-financing all the paper equity they never earned out.
That is the dark side of human nature, to party in the present, at expense of the future. That happens publicly (nation debt, printing money) and privately, spending money we think we have we never earned(internet boom, housing boom equity) , partly because everyone else we know is. No one warns what ‘has to happen’ , ‘how it must end’,that it is Ponzi ,because the warning could hasten the crash. So each rally they are always new suckers that were not killed during the last crash and lured into the new bubble. We are always told ‘this one is real’
Schiff hits on one thing, lowering interest rates to effectively negative to stimulate the economy through inflation and redistribution causes long term problems and promotes the WORST in us, that dark side. We keep on seeing these equity bubbles blow up over and over. Each time we are encouraged by everyone, everyone! to speculate and consume and not save. The government is growing massively during both phases of bubble boom and bust, and we are encouraged to live life for the moment. And it's both party's, and all the investment experts and economists advise us to consume and borrow and speculate.
Your point is still valid. Bush did promote poor minority home ownership and he gets no positive credit for that from anyone, but gets all the blame for crash. A lesson to the next Republican president that tries to buy love from public.