Conservatives Falsely Blame Mortgage Meltdown on Government

While it is true that the federal government put into place regulations that encouraged banks to loan to poor or disadvantaged neighborhoods, the government did NOT FORCE banks to take up loans in general, especially sub-prime loans.

Banks and other lending institutions all rushed to “get in on the act” knowing about all existing mortgage regulations. If these “evil regulations” created unacceptable risk to banks and professional lenders, why did they STILL rush to get into the act?

And why did they skimp on verification practices, such as verifying applicant income? How did the “evil government” force banks to do shoddy applicant verification? Did Uncle Sam slap their hand away from the phone when they tried to call an employer to verify income? Conservatives cannot explain these, and usually try to change the subject when pressed.

One of the smarter conservative debaters (a rare breed) suggested that lending institutions took on the risk because they believed the government indirectly “backed” the loans. Thus, if the loans went bad, they may have felt that the government would bail them out. However, the fact that Lehman Brothers and many other banks went bankrupt shows there is no significant protection.

If they somehow miscalculated this element, then it's NOT the government's fault. Most bubbles are caused by some questionable belief, and this has been happening for centuries. Investors are sometimes just plain stupid and don't seem to learn from history. Blaming government is a cop-out.

Further, there's no evidence that most bad loans were to poor or disadvantaged neighborhoods. Bad loans were given to a wide profile of society and incomes. The vast majority of subprime loans were NOT made under the CRA. The meltdown was almost entirely caused by runaway lemming greed, not regulations. The FoxNews/Rush L. machine is simply pumping out BS.

More info:

http://mediamatters.org/research/200810100022

Preview of 2012 Presidential Debate

Romney: I have more business experience and know how business works.

Obama: So, what would you have done differently?

Romney: Get rid of commie regulation that strangles the free-flow and ballet-like nimbleness of business.

Obama: What is one of the regulations you will get rid of?

Romney: A bad one that slows business growth.

Obama: Such as?

Romney: Uh...minimum wage increases.

Obama: But you told the Boston Globe that you agree minimum wage should keep pace with inflation.

Romney: I did? Oh golly keester. Well, then we should have skipped the stimulus, which would create jobs.

Obama: Like Hoover did? Giving us 25% unemployment?

Romney: Well, kind of sort of, but I would shake more business leaders' hands and pat them on the back. It gives them business confidence. I look businessy and smell businessy! This country lacks business confidence and I excrete confidence! This country needs an Excreter in Cheif, like me.

Another Example of Right-Wing Word Manipulation

Forbes online recently published an article titled, New NASA Data Blows Gaping Hole in Global Warming Alarmism.

I won't go into the merit of the study under discussion here; there are other researchers and commentators that offer a critique of the referenced study. The issue I'm pointing out is how language is used to manipulate the reader.

I'll first paraphrase the story. To simplify things, let's divide the speed of global warming into, fast, medium, slow, and none. “Fast” change would mean the Earth is warming fast, and “slow” means it's warming at a very gradual rate .

The article is saying that the new study rules out the “fast” rate of warming. This implies that if warming is taking place, it's either medium or slow. The study, as interpreted by the Forbes author, is saying that the warming rate is not at the higher-end of the change spectrum, but something slower.

But rather than use the word “fast” or something similar, Forbes chose to use the word “alarmist”, which has negative connotations. Instead of saying, “fast-change computer models”, they use “alarmist computer models”, for example (as if computers panic or something). “Alarmist” implies an excessive concern or paranoia on the part of global warming experts or believers.

Forbes could have used neutral language to describe the change rate, but instead select an emotionally-charged word that characterizes researchers when it should only be characterizing the study or the planet. And they use “alarmist” fifteen times (including derived words). It's not just an isolated slip of the hand.

GOP's War on Experts & Science

ArsTechnia: Why rejecting expertise has become a campaign strategy (and why it scares me)