Free Republic

Perhaps Republicans Could Learn Something HereI despise the term RINO — Republican in Name Only. It splits the Republican Party year after year, and its persistence hands the Democrats power in Congress they would not otherwise be able to earn. I never hear the term DINO — Democrat in Name Only — because the Democrats are too smart for that. Within the Democratic Party are avowed socialists (Bernie Sanders) together with senators and representatives who represent Montana, Arizona, and other generally red states — states that have long traditions of independence and free-market values. In other words, the Democratic Party...

Received wisdom about the 2008 financial crisis has not been faring well lately. Peter Wallison, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, demonstrates in a new book that the subprime housing boom was fostered mainly by federal housing politics and policy, not by the rampant "deregulation" that many have imagined out of whole cloth. Another revelation: The New York Fed staff, as we belatedly learned last year, prepared an analysis showing that Lehman at the time of its collapse was theoretically solvent after all... OK, what about "too big to fail"? Nobody has found an email from a CEO saying,...

There is a remarkable degree of ignorance about the alleged role of Glass-Steagall in the financial crisis. ItÂ’s time to set the record straight. When Sandy Weill, the former chairman of Citigroup, told an interviewer that he thought it had been a mistake to repeal Glass-Steagall, it unleashed a gale of commentary that reflected a remarkable degree of ignorance about the alleged role of Glass-Steagall in the financial crisis. The five myths discussed below do not cover all the misconceptions that seem to be held by those who want to restore Glass-Steagall, but they cover some of the most widely...

The American Enterprise Institute’s Peter Wallison on how government, not greed, was the essential ingredient in the 2008 meltdown. In January 2011, a bipartisan, 10-member, government-created body called the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) issued a comprehensive report assigning blame for the 2008 financial meltdown. The main culprits: “widespread failures in financial regulation and supervision,” “dramatic failures of corporate governance and risk management at many systemically important financial institutions,” “a combination of excessive borrowing, risky investments, and lack of transparency,” a government that “was ill prepared for the crisis,” and “a systemic breakdown in accountability and ethics.” The four Republicans...

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders. The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring. Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest...