Monday, December 14, 2009

Krugman on Republican opposition to bank regulations

Paul Krugman has a terrific column in today's NY Times.
He gives a good rundown on the last several decades of deregulation mania that has led to one economic disaster after another. And then he goes on to talk about how it is so difficult to fix this problem when dealing with a Republican Party (and Blue Dog Democrats) who live in a Bizzaro alternate universe.

Talk to conservatives about the financial crisis and you enter an alternative, bizarro universe in which government bureaucrats, not greedy bankers, caused the meltdown. It’s a universe in which government-sponsored lending agencies triggered the crisis, even though private lenders actually made the vast majority of subprime loans. It’s a universe in which regulators coerced bankers into making loans to unqualified borrowers, even though only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was subject to the regulations in question.

Oh, and conservatives simply ignore the catastrophe in commercial real estate: in their universe the only bad loans were those made to poor people and members of minority groups, because bad loans to developers of shopping malls and office towers don’t fit the narrative.


The Republican Party today is not interested in governing the country. They are only interested in regaining power so they can go back to enriching themselves and their corporate puppet masters at the expense of everyone else.
If voters allow this to happen, our country will sink so low that I'm not sure anyone will be able to pull us out the next time.

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