Bush's "reform agenda" loved variable rate subprime mortgages. His "ownership society" was based on owning all your responsibilities: home, healthcare, education, retirement. He boasted about how more Americans own their home under Presidency, but he now fails to take credit now that the sham has crushed the world economy.
"President Bush during his first term aggressively sought to loosen mortgage loan qualification standards for first-time homebuyers, seeking to reduce or even eliminate down payments for those who might otherwise have trouble affording their loans."Source: Roll Call
via ThinkProgress:
"During the 2004 campaign, President Bush declared his pride in making America what he called “an ownership society.” He promoted expanding home-ownership as the best way to ensure a strong economy, campaigning constantly on the idea:"Source: ThinkProgress
"Further, the quest for an all-encompassing ownership society led to the policies that have created the crisis. From dramatically low interest rates to ignoring the warnings about predatory lending to quashing state regulations that would have helped prevent such massive Wall Street investment in subprime loans, Bush and his allies built an economy on a house of cards that was bound to collapse."
As George said recently, “There will be ample opportunity to debate the origins of this problem.” If Republicans are going to stand tall for an unregulated market, then let them embrace ALL the excesses of that market, as well:the exaggerated losses as well as the exaggerated profits.
An unregulated market will not work for long, because it’s perfectly suited to reward fraud and corruption in the short term. Then there is no long term because an unregulated market will not last until the long term comes to be.
“The market” is not some abstract mechanism like the celestial spheres of Ptolemy. It’s a complex interaction of society, economics and even psychology. It should serve the society, not the other way around.
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