The Wall Street Journal correctly pulls aside the veil and exposes the dubious gimmick that European politicians used to declare that banks are reasonably health. To put it bluntly, they assumed no government would ever default, which really means that the stress test was a fraud or German taxpayers are now on the chopping block […]

The Wall Street Journal opines about the number of new regulations that will be generated by the so-called financial reform legislation that has been approved by Congress. The big winners will by lawyers, the federal bureaucracy, and politicians. The big losers will be shareholders and consumers. The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill passed by the Senate yesterday […]

I have the “opposing view” column in USA Today this morning, and my job was to explain why the politicians who voted for the Wall Street bailout deserve the scorn of voters. I made two points. First, there was no need to bail out specific firms – even if one thought the government needed to […]

Nicole Gelinas has been one of the most astute observers of how government has screwed up the financial system and her column in the Washington Examiner is an excellent summary of why the Dodd-Frank bill is a step in the wrong direction. For 25 years, Washington has done everything in its power to subsidize Americans’ […]

Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Hudson Institute provides an additional reason why the Dodd-Frank bailout legislation is bad for the American economy. But this shouldn’t be too surprising. Senator Dodd and Congressman Frank are akin to a couple of foxes designing rules for the construction of henhouses. So we get government-mandated racial and sexual discrimination in […]

Shakespeare would likely describe the latest major legislation winding its way through Congress as a piece of legislation crafted by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.  Rather than address the systemic distortions created by prior government policies, and which caused the financial meltdown, policy makers are now “[putting] a lot of faith in […]

Russ Roberts of George Mason University has written a very good article for the Mercatus Center explaining – for economists and non-economists – how government intervention created distortions in the housing and finance sectors. He also blames Wall Street, paticularly for lobbying for the policies that caused the distortions and led to the financial crisis. […]

The housing bubble is probably the biggest reason why America now faces a financial crisis. But what caused the bubble, and why are there now so many foreclosures causing so much damage in the rest of the financial sector? In this Center for Freedom and Prosperity, Peter J. Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute explains how government policy mistakes are responsible and he specifically highlights the destructive impact of two government-created entities known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The video concludes with four key lessons that explain how to avoid similar mistakes in the future.

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation today released a new mini-documentary discussing how misguided government policies helped to create the housing bubble, which eventually led to the current financial crisis.