Marco Rubio has learned nothing - Paul Krugman
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/
Because his party has learned nothing.
OK, back up: this morning the papers and the web are full of nuance-sniffing, as people try to find omens in the SOTU and the GOP response. I dont think I can add anything useful to all that. But there was one important point in Marco Rubios remarks that I dont think has been highlighted. Its true, as Andy Rosenthal says, that Rubio mainly reminded us that Republicans dont like government or taxes; surprise! But he also reminded us that Republicans dont like reality.
Heres the passage:
This idea that our problems were caused by a government that was too small its just not true. In fact, a major cause of our recent downturn was a housing crisis created by reckless government policies.
OK, leave on one side the caricature of Obama, with the usual mirror-image fallacy (we want smaller government, therefore liberals just want bigger government, never mind what it does); there we go with the Barney Frank did it story. Deregulation, the explosive growth of virtually unregulated shadow banking, lax lending standards by loan originators who sold their loans off as soon as they were made, had nothing to do with it it was all the Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie, and Freddie.
Look, this is one of the most thoroughly researched topics out there, and every piece of the government-did-it thesis has been refuted; see
Mike Konczal for a summary. No, the CRA wasnt responsible for the epidemic of bad lending; no, Fannie and Freddie didnt cause the housing bubble; no, the high-risk loans of the GSEs werent remotely as risky as subprime.
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