the American dream of home ownership<\/a>, and borrowing generally, washed up on the shores of a financial disaster — the most serious since the Great Depression.<\/p>\nOne cause (there were many) was the failure of our system of consumer financial protection. No one was there to review transactions or protect consumers. The proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency provides the lifeline that consumers need.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Oh, someone was<\/em> there. Federal regulators were there, telling banks they couldn’t borrow funds at the best rates unless they met certain ratios of mandated risky sub-prime transactions to the prudent and secure deals banks would normally seek.<\/p>\nA free market cannot be held culpable if it is not free.<\/p>\n
These so-called predatory lenders Keith, were not only incented<\/em> to push unqualified home buyers into loans they couldn’t afford, they were strong-armed to do so via quotas and measures put in place during the Carter administration and given teeth during the Clinton administration. Sadly, G.W. Bush failed to preemptively unwind the brewing disaster despite the behest of Senator John McCain, among others.<\/p>\nThe government-inflated and guaranteed demand for housing and all the furnishings that go inside created a bubble with all the periphery that usually comes with one. It ended as they usually do – otherwise we’d not know it was a bubble, now would we?<\/p>\n
If anyone needed regulatin’ it was the regulators<\/em>.<\/p>\nThe American Dream is just that, Keith. Home ownership, while beneficial to all of us, is not<\/em> a Government-Given right. With rare exception, when liberals act with politically motivated and self-serving mandates under the auspice of a “lifeline”, disaster follows close behind.<\/p>\n…and that disaster, our Great Recession, is the direct result of exactly the same type of programs Mr. Ellison and his ilk offer as it’s “solution.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This past week Keith Ellison issued a breathless, well-worn and blatantly specious (if not utterly ignorant) monologue to justify the further distension of the bowels of the federal government via yet another bloated agency. As I read his drivel, in my ears rang the sultry voice of classic SNL fixture Jane Curtain, warbling on and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":228,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,51,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalism-v-socialism","category-liberal-tyranny","category-the-great-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/228"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22384,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5571\/revisions\/22384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}