In his remarks following the State of the Union address, Sen. Marco Rubio made some outright lies, perhaps the most egregious of which was his assertion that government caused the housing bubble. There is some slight truth to this in that the Fed's soft money policy fed the bubble and government policy favored home ownership (as have all administrations since FDR).
But mostly, the housing bubble was created by years of flat wages, feeding soaring corporate profits which landed in banks so massively that the banks needed to do something with them, especially pushing mortgage loans on people who could not afford them, including increasingly nonstandard mortgages. Rubio's remarks were less a Republican response, and more the first speech of a campaign for the presidency, stroking the right wing base.
Lew E. Jeppson
North Salt Lake
- Facts about the Boy Scouts of America
- My view: MMR vaccine caused my son's autism
- Dan Liljenquist: IRS scandal is an assault on...
- In our opinion: Utah's caucus system needs...
- Michael Gerson: Common Core standards are not...
- Letters: Dismantle IRS
- Letters: No welfare, ever
- Commentary claims liberals are shocked by...
Subscribe
Mobile
RSS
- Letters: No welfare, ever
77 - Letters: Move to the center 37
- My view: Why moderates lost the caucus... 33
- Tolerance and the same-sex marriage debate 33
- Dan Liljenquist: IRS scandal is an... 32
- Richard Davis: Abortion laws should... 28
- Robert J. Samuelson: Can Americans stem... 21
- Letters: The buck stops here 21
The housing bubble and subsequent crash were a market failure. Republicans can't admit that market failures exist, so they had to invent an alternate history to explain it all. Their history has a few grains of truth, but the fundamental cause More..
NPR's Planet Money team did a fantastic series of investigations several years ago on the housing market collapse. And you're right, the private sector shares a large part of the blame here. Readily approving people for mortgages they could More..
Lew,
Let’s address your misconceptions.
Years of flat wages – According to the census, in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 wages GREW by 1.54%, 3.22%, 5.59%, and 5.42% respectively across all incomes; and for the lower 40%, they More..