Blame the Capitalists!

There has been a lot of high pitched screaming coming from the left aimed directly at free market Republicans who, they submit, are responsible for today's financial crises. Taking the brunt of these hits is John McCain and his advisers. This despite the fact that it was a John McCain co-sponsored bill back in 2005 that could have helped to dodge this bullet. Unfortunately, sneering Democrats kept the measure from even being voted on.

John McCain has proven himself to be an easy target because of comments he has made that indicate a general desire for less regulation. (I wonder what he was thinking during McCain-Feingold.)

While it is true that a lot of bad decisions were made by the high financiers on Wall Street, it would be naive to suggest that it is deregulation and greed that caused this fiasco. Many of the regulations, in the odd case of Fannie and Freddie, were designed to loosen up money to high risk borrowers. Lenders were, in effect, because of the regulations, rewarded to engage in behaviors that they would never have engaged in had they been lending their own money.

Would rolling back these types of regulations be a bad thing? In Washington, of course, the only answer to bad regulations is more regulations, not deregulation.

It would be much more honest to declare today's financial problems as being the result of government intervention and human nature--the first in good faith (though misguided) efforts to spread around the American Dream with liberal use of taxpayer's money, while the second is something that will never be successfully legislated, regardless of the level of good faith.