Obama Insists Mess Comes From Too Little Regulation, Not Bad Regulations That Forced Risky Loans

(By Jim Geraghty, National Review Online) - Obama, yesterday:

Taking a jab at the deregulation that the market has undergone during the previous eight years, Obama said that, “They wanted to let the market run free, but instead they let it run wild.”

This is one of the areas that Team McCain has to thoroughly and relentlessly refute: That the market wasn't running free; the government, through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, loaned billions of dollars to people you wouldn't loan $200 to because you didn't trust them to pay it back. Then, through the Community Reinvestment Act, they punished banks that didn't make enough loans to people who do not have the credit, assets, income, or down payment to qualify for a normal mortgage, a.k.a. the subprime market.

No one in their right minds loans money to somebody who they think won't pay it back. But the government said banks had to, for reasons of "fairness".

We have to pound these points into the public consciousness, or else we're going to make the exact same mistake again, not too far down the road.

McCain was making these points in April, when prompted to by Larry Kudlow. Why not now?