1. Deregulation of the financial sector.

2. Artificially low interest rates.

3. 30 years of conservative economic policy.

1. Deregulation of the financial sector.
The regulations that mandated the explosion of subprime loans are the cause of the meltdown.

2. Artificially low interest rates. A policy started by Clinton to mask the inflationary nature of his tax and spend economic policies.

3. 30 years of conservative economic policy. Manifestly untrue; we haven’t lived within our means since FDR’s massive expansion of wasteful social spending, some of which is still wasting our money today.

The Federal Reserve’s cheap money policies created a housing bubble by keeping interest rates artificially low.

Not quite; it was the false demand signal sent to the finance markets by the expansion of homebuying as a tool of social engineering that made the cheap money policy(Geithner) necessary to sustain it.
You missed the root cause, brenario; all that follows is effect.
No CRA, no affirmative action home loan mandates, no housing bubble. The false demand signal jacked up housing prices due to the insufficient supply. Econ 101.

Whistler,

The gold standard doesn’t have to be decreed by politicians. Anything and everything that people will accept for payment should be used. Of course over thousands and thousands of years of competition, gold (along with silver and copper) have risen to the top.

When I say we should go back to a commodity based standard, I’m not saying that the government should force us to have one. But I am saying that gold will rise to the top and be the money of choice.

So you’re saying that it was Congress’s preference to get everyone into houses that forced the Federal Reserve to artificially lower interest rates to create the bubble.
No, it was the Dem Party’s choice to use home ownership as a tool of social engineering, for vote-buying purposes. Even with the lowered lending standards mandated by their quota system for subprime loans, Geithner still had to keep a loose monetary policy to feed the new affirmative action market. Again, it all started with the idea that home ownership could be manipulated for social engineering purposes.
Normally, the interest rate is the price of money, determined by the supply/demand relationship in the finance markets. With the false demand signal from the social engineering home ownership scheme, the price of money would have increased, balancing out the market and foiling the quotas, so interest rates had to be kept artificially low.
It was the affirmative action home loan mandates that started the ball rolling.

If my assessment of your comments is correct, then I was right. The Federal Reserve caused the bubble. Your assessment of my comments is incorrect. The bubble was caused by the desire to sell more homes to people who couldn’t afford them, creating a false demand signal to the market. The Fed policies under Geithner certainly exacerbated the problem, but were not the original cause.

Without the Federal Reserve, the market would’ve set interest rates far higher, making it harder for people to bid up the price of homes which created the bubble.

Without the Federal Reserve, the market would’ve set interest rates far higher, making it harder for people to bid up the price of homes which created the bubble.

Again, without the artifically increased demand from the affirmative action housing policies, starting with Carter and increased under Clinton, no bubble would have been created, and so no Fed manipulation of interest rates would have been necessary.
Cause, then effect. It’s a one way process.

The day the myth of the free market died:

Asked by committee chairman Henry Waxman if he was saying his world view was “not working”, Mr Greenspan said: “Absolutely, precisely. You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.”

“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.”

Alan Greenspan
Congressional Testimony

Hi Big 180, how is your day going?

No “funeral”, little parrot; the free market is what happens whenever people are free to make choices away from the heavy hand of the greedy govt. Again, you obviously possess no knowledge of your own, and are left to spin the words of others to tell your lies.

Bob quotes a dude who says he abandoned free market principles.

Yeah, in late 2008, after 30 years of conservatism’s domination of the political and policy agendas. After free market policies led to the meltdown of the economy requiring trillions in government money to keep it from collapsing.

Kinda like a criminal renouncing his criminal past and then moving to Texas.

Sorry, the $5 trillion was amassed BEFORE the meltdown.

$5 trillion added to national debt under Bush-Jan 09

Bush’s fiscal legacy: bigger debt-Sept 07

I have more if you’d like them.

If you’re young, you’ll face a much harder life thanks to bush and the 30 years of conservative dominance. If you have kids in the future, they’re fucked.

brenarlo:

You can’t change the fact that DC is full of criminal politicians… what you can change is their ability to spend money. You can do that by eliminating fiat currency and by eliminating the money printing monopoly that is the Federal Reserve.

Who passes the law that changes this?

Exactly. You can’t change this.