The Evil Republicans and the Wall Street Meltdown

If you're not reading Investor's Business Daily's editorial page these days, you're really missing out. They've had a series of have a great articles that set the record straight on the Wall Street Meltdown. Here's an important one that shows some interesting facts.

For instance: This crisis was expected. By whom?

Nancy Pelosi? Harry Reid?

Nope. How about John McCain?

As for presidential contender John McCain, just two years after Bush's plan, McCain also called for badly needed reforms to prevent a crisis like the one we're now in.

"If Congress does not act," McCain said in 2005, "American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole."

But even before that, back in 2003, we see another misunderestimated Republican politician trying to do something about the problems with Freddie and Fannie risk:

Here's the lead of a New York Times story on Sept. 11, 2003: "The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago."

Bush tried to act. Who stopped him? Congress, especially Democrats with their deep financial and patronage ties to the two government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie and Freddie.

"These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Rep. Barney Frank, then ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

Nice. Of course, Rep Frank says that he's a leading voice for reform of Freddie and Fannie. Sam Dealey makes mincemeat of that argument over at US News and World Report.

There's more. A lot more. Go read the whole thing.

Meanwhile, if you want to behave like Wall Street, you can take your undervalued assets and ask the government to bail you out of them, too. You can name your own price, too. It doesn't matter what you could sell them for. In fact, the only way to know that they're undervalued is if nobody will pay you what you think they're worth. So name your price, and let Uncle Sam take them off your hands.

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