printThe question, I guess, is rhetorical. Still, why does Frontpage Magazine describe Steve Moore, of the War Street Journal, as “One of the country’s sharpest economic minds,” who can “explains how conservatives can save America from left-wing destruction”? This introductory blurb is on the front page of FPM, today, April 2.
Here’s how I introduced this beautiful neoconservative mind on BAB, starting in 09.30.08:
Stephen Moore authored a book paradoxically titled Bullish on Bush: How the Ownership Society Is Making America Richer.
Yes, Bush was a bailout bandit”: “Bush’s ownership society, built as it was on quicksand, quickly metamorphosed into the bailout society.”
Bush lobbed his financial WMD first by nationalizing the heavily socialized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, another formality. …
Buried in Bush’s blather was a tacit acknowledgment that government’s deep infiltration of the mortgage and homeownership markets encouraged a laissez faire attitude toward lending and borrowing.
“Because [Fannie and Freddie] were chartered by Congress,” confessed Bush, “many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk.”
Fannie and Freddie’s “charter” partners Bush exonerated.
Moreover, nowhere did Bush come clean about the continual expansion of credit by the Central and commercial banks. Loose monetary policy has caused interest rates to fall below the natural market rate, and had precipitated an artificial stimulation of economic activity reflected in the colossal malinvestment and misallocation of resources witnessed in the housing market.
The Bush government—and previous administrations—had eliminated the risks of mortgage lending. The subprime fiasco, in a nutshell, was a consequence of extending credit to the un-creditworthy, chief of who were minorities. “The Diversity Recession” is how VDARE.com commentator Steve Sailer has aptly dubbed the mortgage misadventure.
You had the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) colluding with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to provide taxpayer-subsidized home loans to illegal immigrants, no questions asked.
You had the 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the 1975 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, and the US Fair Housing Act are—all arrows in the quiver of the federal government and the Department of Justice, aimed at forcing banks to throw good money after bad by lending it to those with low credit ranking. Mainly minorities.
Under the guise of remedying (alleged endemic) root-and-branch racism, the State [under Bush] had legislatively removed the risks of mortgage lending, thus precipitating the housing bubble.
Magnificent mind Steve Moore wrote an entire book in praise of Bush’s role in that kind of “ownership.” Will anyone ever make Moore own that?
Being Establishment means never having to say you’re sorry (or atone for your mistakes).