The conservative "talking points" on the housing crisis are petty partisan gamesmanship

Conservative writer Thomas Sowell is among the pundit-class who enjoys attacking "big goverment" on a regular basis. If his arguments weren't so sophmoric and poorly written I'd take the time to dress him down more often. But let's just say that recently he "argued" that the housing bill and the stimulus were stupid and destined to fail. Because they are instances of government interference into the "free market".

He goes on to claim that liberal policies and government intervention caused the housing crisis. Of course this is false on its face. But rather than take the time to seriously engage his crockery, its better to simply point out what he purposefully hides. That is, what was at the very least the proximate cause of the housing crisis. The policies and mindset behind W's "ownership society".

On that note, THIS article by Zachary Karabell of Newsweek is a must-read. As he points out

"To achieve his vision, Bush pushed new policies encouraging homeownership, like the "zero-down-payment initiative," which was much as it sounds—a government-sponsored program that allowed people to get mortgages without a down payment. More exotic mortgages followed, including ones with no monthly payments for the first two years. Other mortgages required no documentation other than the say-so of the borrower. Absurd though these all were, they paled in comparison to the financial innovations that grew out of the mortgages—derivatives built on other derivatives, packaged and repackaged until no one could identify what they contained and how much they were, in fact, worth."



And happily an absolutely terrific explanation of the housing/credit crisis has been created by Johnthan Jarvis and is available at crisisofcredit.com. Really this is a must-watch.



If partisan hacks and conservative ideologues like Sowell took the time to actually study the issues we face, they might be a little less partisan and less hacky.

And maybe we really could be post-partisan.


Pragmatic solutions should be our goal in politics. This is why I've been such a big fan of Obama and of Mayor Bloomberg.

And thinking that any ideology is going to secure solutions is silly. But it is true that goverment can successfully intervene in the economy. So I'm cautiously optimistic that the suite of plans Obama has in mind including the stimulus and the housing bailout will help.