Political Quotes

“This month marks the third anniversary of the Federal seizure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the bailout of AIG, and other events that marked a turning point in the global financial crisis. At the time, many journalists, pundits, and policymakers were eager to interpret the crisis as a failure of capitalism, as some called it, or a failure of free markets. There was a famous Newsweek cover that said, ``We're All Socialists Now.'' This interpretation is fundamentally flawed, and I wish to speak a little bit about that. Blaming capitalism and free markets and deregulation for causing the crisis that occurred 3 years ago does not tell the real story. We must remember that misguided government policies played a big role in pumping up the housing bubble, and they have subsequently played a big role in delaying our recovery from this crash. So I wish to briefly discuss the findings of several economists who highlight these points. Loose monetary policy was one such misguided policy that fueled the crisis. Writing recently in the quarterly journal, National Affairs, Stanford economist John Taylor pointed out that U.S. monetary policy became highly discretionary in the years leading up to the 2008 crisis, whereas monetary policy had been more rules-based during the previous two decades.…”