What caused the recent financial collapse, socialism or capitalism ? Here is what Greenspan and others have to say. You need to know this.

A carefully crafted "amnesia" has been propagated onto the backs of the American taxpayer. It is time to correct this problem and Midknight Review is about to give that correction an initial effort. Read this NY Times article brief as a context to our greater point. ----- jds.

WASHINGTON — The committee examining the causes of the financial crisis heard a strong defense of the Federal Reserve from its former chairman on Wednesday as the panel began three days of hearings 0n the failure to rein in Citigroup, Fannie Mae and the subprime mortgage market.

In his testimony, an unflinching Alan Greenspan fended off a barrage of questions about the Fed’s failure to crack down on subprime mortgages and other abusive lending practices during his lengthy tenure.

He pointed out that the Fed had warned about subprime lending and low-down-payment mortgages in 1999, and again in 2001. And he argued that if the Fed had tried to slow the housing market amid a “fairly broad consensus” about encouraging homeownership, “the Congress would have clamped down on us.”

He added: “There is a lot of amnesia that’s emerging, apparently.” Read the full article here.

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Editor's comments: understand that one of the primary causes of the current crisis was the Marxist/Socialist push for a thing called "Affordable Housing." The politicians who drove that program into the ground remain at the head of the financial committees responsible for the oversight of "Affordable Housing," namely, Barney Frank (in the House) and Chris Dobb (in the Senate). These two individuals (especially Barney Frank) have credited the economic bust to the "failed system of free market capitalism," rather than assuming responsibility for the problem, themselves -- after all, they have been in charge of the oversight of our financial institutions since January of 2007. While "Affordable Housing" remains the stated goal of this bunch of Marxist Socialists, the banks are refusing to join in on a continuation of the failed Socialist policies that are actually the cause of the financial crisis (in part). In other words, the banking industry has dealt with the causative issues de facto, while the Obama Administration flounders around with its Socialist/Marxist agenda. When it comes to money, there are those in high places who have no intentions of letting pure amateurs unltimately bring harm to their financial interests and plans. For the immediate future, that is a good thing. In the end, and apart from the Obama Madness, it may be a very bad thing (read The Creature from Jekyll Island and you will know what we mean by this last statement).

An excellent non-partisan article on this subject - the causes of the current financial crisis - can be found on a PDF here. When we say "non partisan," we mean to imply an essay that that does not name names, political parties and the like (unlike our practice here at Midknight Review). The 21 page article is about the causative issues relating to the crisis. When you get to the site, click on one of the four locations nearest your address and begin reading. For us, "Stanford" was the selection.

Understand that Greenspan is in agreement with the theme of this post, that we have moved away from the true issues bringing on the housing/financial crisis in our zeal to "fundamentally change the United States of America."

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