It was only a matter of time before the genetically disingenuous tried pinning the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US on ‘teh Left’. Today, my first sightings … a hatchet-job by white witch Ann Coulter and a God-awful Youtube mash-up that looks like it was done in a special school. (I should admit that I came to these via the bottom of the Internet biscuit barrell, MK and ;;;; respectively. And yes, I feel so dirty…)

The central premise offered by both is that Clinton and the Democrats are responsible for the whole mess (surprise surprise) because they wanted poor blacks and Hispanics to own homes. Mortgage-underwriting quangos like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were “forced” by Evil Bill into relaxing their borrowing criteria. Banks then followed suit, “forced” into approving risky mortgages. For nigh on ten years banks, lending franchises, mortgage brokers, etc. suffered immeasurably, “forced” to approve and dispense billions of dollars’ worth of high-risk home loans, all at the behest of Clinton. And when the economy slumped, the bubble burst and more than a million foreclosures unfolded, investment bankers copped daggers in their sweet and innocent hearts.

There is a grain of truth to Coulter’s nonsense, as there is with most conspiracy theories, but she forgets to mention more than she reveals. Clinton’s programme did contribute to the problem but so did those of the banks, as this op-ed from 1999 shows:

Fannie Mae … has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits. In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers.

Coulter either thinks that banks and their financial offshoots are benign entities who do nothing but sit around, waiting to respond to policy – or she is lying by omission. They are as complicit in this whole mess as Clinton is, if not moreso, thanks to their irresponsible pursuit of the fast buck. But what of the Republicans, of whom there is little mention in Ann’s tirade? She neglected to say that it was the Reagan administration that oversaw and facilitated the Savings & Loans debacle of the 1980s (essentially a smaller version of the current crisis). Or that a Republican-dominated Congress in 1999 tore down the regulatory framework for investment banking that was put in place after the Great Depression. These and other neo-con policies, according to Robert Kuttner, have “turned the economy into a casino”. And now it is the US taxpayer who not for the first time is expected to bail out Wall Street’s high rollers.

Last word on Coulter’s deceitful account should go to the two local ignoramuses who are cheering it on:

“I had a feeling that was the case … yet another leftist screw up.”
“I think that the case it puts is rather convincing.”