Housing

My colleague Bill Scher has put together an important post today documenting the subprime mortgage crisis as a failure of conservatism. I have but one thing to add from my own research on the subject:

Federal regulators once held a press conference in 2003. To symbolize their commitment to cutting red tape for bankers, they held up gardening shears. The head of Bush's Office of Thrift Supervision, James Gilleran, did them one better. He brought a chainsaw.

And as Bill documents, the deregulation of the S&L industry ("thrifts") is a huge part of the story.

And the guy Bush hired to keep them deregulated brought a chainsaw to the party. "Chainsaw Jim" should go into the annals of Big Con folklore right next to "Heck of a Job Brownie."

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On Sunday, ABC's This Week failed to hold Alan Greenspan accountable for his role in the mortgage crisis. But today, the New York Times did, picking up where Salon.com left off.

And as the NYT report shows -- like every other failure of the Bush Era -- Greenspan's failure was not one of incompetence, but the conservative ideology of reckless government. more »

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Another sorry day for the Sunday shows as they go 0-for-3 for the Watchdog. more »

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Every Friday in our Weekend Watchdog feature, we post suggested questions for scheduled Sunday guests. You can add your own questions in the comment thread. We'll also include contact information for the shows, so we can let them know what their viewers want asked.

And on Sunday at 4 PM ET, tune in to Air America Radio's "Seder on Sundays" program, where I'll offer the Weekend Watchdog Wrap-Up.

For former Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn. (CBS' Face The Nation): In the last debate, you refused to answer when the field was asked, "How many of you believe global climate change is a serious threat and caused by human activity?"

The Nobel Peace Prize just went to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which brought together several thousand scientists from across the globe, and found that the answer to that question was "Yes."

How can you succeed as president if you refuse to accept the conclusions of sound science, and base policy on objective facts? more »

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Over at the Huffington Post, market analyst (and 1990s dot-com bubble puffer) Henry Blodget asks the inevitable conservative question about the mortgage meltdown:

...in what universe is it fair and right for the government to single-handely change the terms of loans negotiated between two willing parties simply because those loans haven't worked out so well for one side?

Specifically, why should banks be forced to cut strapped homeowners a break? Why should the rest of the country's homeowners, who didn't willingly take out mortgages they now can't afford -- or who didn't buy houses -- be forced to subsidize the dice-rollers who did?

Rev. Jesse Jackson has the answer. more »

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