Whah?

Ok, so I was reading the Trib's editorial page this morning (don't laugh - it's always good to know where the next crazie is coming from) and I found this.

I thought I was reading the wrong paper when I read:

History will show that three years ago many prescient people in the banking world tried to warn regulators of the coming financial apocalypse.

But history also will show, as it should, that the Bush administration's banking watchdogs failed us by ignoring or delaying action on those warnings when they still had time to ameliorate some of the worst consequences of the housing meltdown.

As early as January 2006, as a recent Associated Press review of federal documents shows, some lenders were begging regulators to make it harder for banks to give risky mortgages to the patently unqualified home buyers who were inflating a dangerous housing bubble.

Did I really read that? The Tribune-Review is blaming the "financial apocalypse" (at least in part) on a lack of action by the Bush Administration's financial regulators? I would have expected to read such clear thinking coming from - well most any place other than DickieCougarMellonScaife's editorial board.

But then after all is said and done, the editorial ends with:

Socialists love to blame the financial meltdown on too little regulation. But as the AP's investigation shows, we had all the banking regulation we needed. It was just captured and kept from working as it should have by special-interest politics.

Whah? After pointing the finger at the Bush White House, (and citing the AP as a source along the way) they spin it to "special interest politics." But does the AP story actually say what they say it says?

Not really.

The AP story they site begins with:

The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.

And this a paragraph away:

Bowing to aggressive lobbying — along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK — regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.

So there were regulations proposed that didn't see the light of day. Not exactly what the Trib wrote. Close but no cigar.

By the by, does the AP offer up any sort of explanation for the Administration's regulatory inaction? Well, yes. Yes it does:

The administration's blind eye to the impending crisis is emblematic of its governing philosophy, which trusted market forces and discounted the value of government intervention in the economy.

Ah - that's a bit different from what Scaife's gang said, huh?

technorati tags:
political news | news | world news
More at: News 2 Cromley