Matthew Yglesias » For the Record

Dec 1st, 2008 at 3:59 pm

For the Record

Bush was specifically and repeatedly warned about the need to take regulatory action to avoid a financial system meltdown, and chose to ignore those warnings because he’s a really bad president. Thanks to his indifference, incompetence, or perhaps malice, millions of people will wind up losing their jobs and suffering dire consequences.

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Filed under: Bush Legacy, Economy,

42 Responses to “For the Record”

ed Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 4:07 pm
and chose to ignore those warnings because he’s a really bad president.

…and person. George Bush, Jr. is both a bad President as well as a bad person in general. For the record.
El Cid Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 4:12 pm
This is wrong because I have heard from much of talk radio and many relatives and coworkers that Bush Jr. just didn’t have the authority to face Barney Frank, who is the one who caused all of this.
tao9 Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Senator Dodd was specifically and repeatedly warned about the need to take legislative action to avoid a financial system meltdown, and chose to ignore those warnings because he’s a really bad senator. Thanks to his “VIP” borrower status with Countrywide Financial and personal relationship with Angelo Mozzilo; indifference, incompetence, or perhaps malice, millions of people will wind up losing their jobs and suffering dire consequences.

Congressman Barney Frank was specifically and repeatedly warned about the need to take legislative action to avoid a financial system meltdown, and chose to ignore warnings regarding the insolvency and corruption at FannieMae because he’s a really bad US Rep. Thanks to his relationship with his former life-partner, a high ranking Fannie official; indifference, incompetence, or perhaps malice, millions of people will wind up losing their jobs and suffering dire consequences.
————————————————————

Step right up, anyone can play.
ed Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Step right up, anyone can play.

But only one is technically “The President” (if only technically).

Hey, I won! Huzzah!
eric k Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 4:22 pm
tao,

Dodd and Frank weren’t in the majority until January 2007. Now granted a Senator even in the minority has some options, though not many, a Rep in the minority might as well spend his time playing Solitaire on his PC for all he can accomplish.

The warnings to Bush were from 2005 and 2006.

Better right wing revisionism from our trolls please.
Cryptic Ned Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Congress didn’t do anything either. Of course, “tao9″’s comment is total idiocy – Barney Frank didn’t destroy the world economy for the sake of his love life, much like Barack Obama and Frankin Raines didn’t team up to destroy the world economy for the sake of selling black people homes they couldn’t afford – but still, Congress ignored the same warnings.
howard Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 4:25 pm
tao, do we really have to spend our time explaining, once again, that fannie and freddie were not the cause of the crisis? really?
Steve Sailer Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Matt, you are being much too easy on Bush’s role in the Mortgage Meltdown. His were less sins of omission (failure to take away the punch bowl when the party got going) than of commission (pouring a bottle of Everclear into the punchbowl). His 2002-2004 campaign to add 5.5 million minority households through zero down payment loans, bigger Fannie/Freddie minority and low income quotas, and many other similar steps was the most direct causes of the Housing Bubble.

Bush and Rove were trying to buy the Hispanic vote through dubious loans (mortgage dollars going to Hispanics went up 691% from 1999 to 2006) and construction jobs. That’s a big reason half the foreclosures are in just four states: California, Nevada, Arizona, and Florida.
howard Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 5:04 pm
i often ask myself what kind of comments al would come up with if he were actually concerned about reality instead of cheap-shotting? after all, we could have avoided a lot of problems if kerry had defeated bush in 2004, and who voted for bush over kerry? why that would be…al! so it must be all al’s fault.

which, admittedly, beats steve sailer’s analysis that it’s really all the minority homeowners. what a disgustingly stupid piece of twaddle. at least al is funny in his cheap-shotting….
rfv Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 5:13 pm
i often ask myself what kind of comments al would come up with if he were actually concerned about reality instead of cheap-shotting?

Al is, of course, one of the internet’s most legendary hacks. And we can only hope that he’s personally suffering from the catastrophic policies he’s supported so enthusiastically. Still, his bleating about how he’s not the ONLY asshole on earth is illuminating. What he’s effectively pointing out is that people like Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, etc. are correct — that the US establishment is essentially incompetent and corrupt all the way through.
hack Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Letme guess. The memo was called “Credit Default Swaps Determined to Wreak Havoc in U.S.”, and his response to the briefer was “OK, you’ve covered your ass” before he went back to clearing brush.
joe from Lowell Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 5:52 pm
tao,

Dodd and Frank weren’t in the majority until January 2007.

At which point they immediately set to work on implementing regulations they had been unable to pass under the Republicans.

Hey, wait a minute! Stever Sailer, blaming a problem on minorities? That can’t be right!

That’s a big reason half the foreclosures are in just four states: California, Nevada, Arizona, and Florida. Uh, yeah. It has nothing to do with those four states having the highest population growth.
Client #11 Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Does that make it okay to call Bush the worst president ever, or would that still be too shrill? Now that you’ve read part of a book dealing with the 19th century, I await your expert opinion.
Client #11 Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 6:47 pm
hey al, it’s good to see that the financial crisis hasn’t damaged richard mellon scaife’s wealth too badly. send him my regards.

xoxoxo,
Client #11
Jack Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 6:56 pm
I guess those warnings were prescient, but they also seem like they were based on simple common sense. Why would anybody ever believe in the omniscience of the free market if it was discouraging lenders from finding out if those they lent to had jobs or understood the nature of their loan, or encouraging companies to sell securitized packages to businesses and institutions around the world that didn’t understand what they were buying? That seems like the exact, precise, diametric opposite of what we want.
I guess markets can fail after all. Who knew?
rfv Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Who among the Democrats am I supposed to believe would have prevented this?

Excellent point, Mr. Nader!
Steve Sailer Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 7:27 pm
I’m fascinated by progressives’ absolute refusal to mention the most direct evidence of Bush and Rove’s culpability in the Mortgage Meltdown — all the speeches Bush made to the real estate industry, the mortgage industry, and various faith-based minority organizations promoting his October 15, 2002 White House Conference on Minority Homeownership, where he called for increasing by 5.5 million by 2010 the number of minority homeowners, and where he attacked down payments as the chief obstacle to minorities getting their fair share of the “American Dream.”

After this long White House campaign against down payments, the percentage of first time homebuyers in California, the epicenter of the Housing Bubble, who put no money down shot up from under 7% in the last years of the Clinton Administration to 41% in 2006.

Bush wasn’t putting the reins on federal regulators (such as the IRS which took until 2006 to rule that faith-based down payment assistance programs were a scam) out of libertarian principle, he was actively sending federal regulators the message that attempts to restrict the debauching of traditional credit standards in the mortgage market would be considered an assault on minority attainment of the American Dream.

The Housing Bubble probably did increase Bush’s share of the Hispanic vote by a few points in 2004. Of course, debauching credit standards as part of Karl Rove’s plan to turn Hispanics into home-owning Republicans also debauched credit standards for everybody, so it wound up being a national and international disaster.

You can see just a tiny fraction of the documentation for this history at:

http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/080928_rove.htm
ed Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 7:59 pm
I’m fascinated by progressives’…

And yet we progressives are not in the least fascinated by established cryptoracists bringing more cryptoracism to the table. Not in the least.
JonF Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 9:59 pm
RE: the percentage of first time homebuyers in California, the epicenter of the Housing Bubble, who put no money down shot up from under 7% in the last years of the Clinton Administration to 41% in 2006.

Are you really sure they were “first-time” homebuyers? There was so much blatant lying going on by 2006 that any such cliams are open to skepticism. A great many house-flippers claimed to be both first-time buyers and also owner-occupants so as to be eligible for deals on down-payments, no-PMI mortgages and so forth. The housing meltdown is not about poor people getting houses– that’s a drop in the bucket– it’s about middle class people thinking they had found a get-rich-quick scheme and buying multiple houses under programs meant for first-time buyers and the poor.
Steve Sailer Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 10:51 pm
JonF argues:

“The housing meltdown is not about poor people getting houses– that’s a drop in the bucket– it’s about middle class people thinking they had found a get-rich-quick scheme and buying multiple houses under programs meant for first-time buyers and the poor.”

Actually, if you look at where the foreclosure rate is highest, it’s not in either poor or middle-class neighborhoods, but in working class ones. For example, in LA County, the worst foreclosure rate is in Lake Los Angeles, a blue collar exurb in the miserable high desert east of Palmdale. It doesn’t have many college graduates, but it’s poverty rate in 2000 was only 17%, so it doesn’t have many extremely poor people either. It’s the kind of place where people try to keep their kids out of the underclass by buying a house, then try to cling to respectability by their fingertips.

That the second quartile up from the bottom of society was going to be hardest hit by the Housing Bubble popping was inevitable. The Clinton and Bush administrations worked hard to boost the home ownership rate from its traditional 64% up to 69%, so the incremental homeowners had to come primarily from that second quartile of ability to own a home, by cutting renters from the 36th percentile down to the 31st.

Of course, the government over the last 16 years didn’t have many plans for how the second quartile of society could _earn_ more money, but the government was all in favor of them consuming more by borrowing more money. The plan was for the working class to end up with big houses, big TVs and big rims, while the financial elite ended up holding big IOUs from the financial non-elite. A win-win situation! What could possibly go wrong?
Richard Steven Hack Says:
December 2nd, 2008 at 9:06 am
Well, at least (most of) the US citizens negatively impacted by the financial crisis will keep breathing – unlike the 4,000-odd US soldiers and over a million Iraqis. I imagine the four million displaced Iraqis would like to have it as bad as the “dire consequences” unemployed Americans will have – like, unemployment insurance benefits…
Persia Says:
December 2nd, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Actually, if you look at where the foreclosure rate is highest, it’s not in either poor or middle-class neighborhoods, but in working class ones.

That’s still no evidence of the actual income of the people buying and defaulting on the houses in question.
eyelessgame Says:
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:20 pm
…chose to ignore those warnings because he’s a really bad president.

To be more specific, he chose to ignore those warnings because he was following the ideology of conservative libertarianism. Any other follower of that ideology would have done the same thing.
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