It's Not All About Lending Practices

The idea that Fanny and Freddie are behind the current economic mess is a vicious mischaracterization. A coded way for the conservatives to scream, "It were the darkies what done it!" I'm sure many books and treatises will be written on the subject in many days but, if you ask me, it might have been the mortgage sector where the crisis first unfurled, but it was really the overleveraging of banks that toppled everything over - because it built an unstable platform, a waiting disaster just waiting for any one of its supporting pillars to get nudged.

Yet, the idea that it was lending practices that destroyed our economy is a comforting one for conservatives. Because believing in that lie means they don't have to own up to the realization that their governing philosophy of tax less and deregulate more has been so discredited.