Parallels?Steve Benen,
writing about the Bush administration and OSHA: (emp orig)
By all appearances, this administration barely wants OSHA to even exist, so I suppose it stands to reason that Bush political appointees would gut the agency and turn to lobbyists to help guide OSHA's decision making.
And adds:
Indeed, it's hard to count just how many regulatory agencies have, under this president, effectively been run by the business interests it was supposed to be regulating.
Isn't that exactly what happened with the financial business?
posted by Quiddity at 12/29/2008 09:33:00 AM
No, the financial industry was being run by Congress -- the CRA and loaning to struggling people was not the industry's idea; it was Congress's idea and Congress that provided the incentives and structure to do it.
If banks had to hang on to their mortgages, they would take great care to vet the borrowers. With Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buying up all the risky loans, why even bother checking someone's credit report before giving them a mortgage. With the CRA threatening prosecution for denying anyone a mortgage (and lawyers like Obama working for outfits like ACORN to carry out the threats of lawsuits), why reject anyone at all for any reason whatsoever?
This was NOT a free market failure. The mortgage market was operating under anything but free market principles.
even cnbc dared to point out the obvious: SEC's conflict of interest in failing to regulate the market.
