How Do You Spell “Scapegoat”? “D-E-R-E-G-U-L-A-T-I-O-N”
Over at Reason, Catherine Mangu-Ward has a long piece that helps to deflate the notion that Congressional Democrats and many on the left have been pimping lately: namely that “excessive deregulation” is chiefly to blame for our current financial woes.
I don’t really have time to summarise the whole thing right now, so I’ll just offer this quote:
Letting Freddie and Fannie get away with murder wasn’t deregulation. It was bad governance. And letting deregulation take the primary blame for a credit-fueled housing bubble and its aftermath isn’t an argument. It’s misdirection.
Today’s economy has done a lot to discredit the free market in the minds of a lot of people. Nanci Pelosi and friends are doing their best to put even more nails in the coffin and drooling over the prospect of the Federal Government assuming even more control over the commanding heights of the economy. Why let them go completely unchallenged? Read the rest.
