BAILOUT: Yes or No?

[Koga No Goshi]

Indeed. De-regulation in the late 1990s allowed new avenues for making profits in America. Those who used those opportunities wisely are doing fine.

But our problem is beyond mere capitalistic greed - the government and special interest groups pushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to accept sub prime loans and the government didn't put the standard regulations on Fannie and Freddie.

I'm hearing the Democrat leadership is going to reinstall the liberal provisions of the bill to get more demos on board, including a huge amount of money for ACORN, the special interest group that pushed for giving sub prime loans to poor minorities.

CR

Seriously, stop with the reinventing history. If you want to turn this into a pure partisan matter (and of course, from your perspective, it is all and only the Democrats) then let's get into the ownership society. Whose deal is that? Bush. You guys are still complaining to this day about the New Deal, when your party has given us such wonderful things as the ownership society, the idea that you can have whatever you want, with a joke tax cut, on a subprime loan, a credit card, or by taking a part time minimum wage job or going to night school. This is the guy who told us to go shopping after 9/11.

"We're creating... an ownership society in this country, where more Americans than ever will be able to open up their door where they live and say, welcome to my house, welcome to my piece of property. - President George W. Bush, October 2004."

Any finger you want to point at the Dems, three more are pointing back at you. The fact that we were even in a housing bubble is in large part because of heavily (not exclusively, but dominantly) Republican policies of deregulation, tax incentives for outsourcing, and the gutting of many major domestic industries. The last big cash cow was the housing market, and people's ability to pull big credit out of a house to pay for things their jobs didn't afford them but the economy depended on people buying (no matter how much we want to lecture about individual responsibility.) The fact that subprime loans were popping up like Starbucks was the result of deregulation of the financial markets, not regulation. The fact that they were not checking credit scores or income was deregulation. This was private failure enabled by pro-business, deregulation policies. This was not private victimhood brought on by too much regulation.

And, if you want to make this all about homeownership regulations regarding Freddie and Fannie, and blame it on the Dems... well, you guys controlled all three branches for nearly 8 years. But you were too busy with your ownership society.

I love how the defense of Republicans today, especially the McCain campaign, is "well we've been talking about the need for reform in the housing market for awhile now." Yeah, well, you did nothing with 7 and change years in control of government about it, so we know what your words were worth, right?