The mortgage meltdown was caused partly by the government, which created an artificial market for bad mortgages.  The Washington Examiner cites a recent study by Peter Wallison, who had prophetically warned about risky financial practices for years, finding that two-thirds of all bad mortgages were either “bought by government agencies or required to be bought by private companies under government pressure.” Now, the Federal Housing Administration is ramping up its purchases of low-quality mortgage loans, threatening taxpayers with hundreds of billions of dollars…

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Rapidly-rising Medicare spending already threatens “to crush the federal budget,” and much Medicare spending is wasteful, yet the Obama Administration claims it can somehow save money by creating Medicare-like programs to cover all Americans. In the New York Times, economics professor Tyler Cowan calls it “the new voodoo economics.” Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson concludes that Obama’s health-care plan “is naive, hypocritical or simply dishonest. Probably all three.”

Obama is firing an inspector general who exposed wrongdoing by one of his supporters, and previously…

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Earlier, the Obama Administration pushed through $250 billion in mortgage bailouts, to bail out even some high-income borrowers with normal mortgage payments, and forced financial institutions it took over in the name of fiscal responsibility, like Freddie Mac, to run up billions in losses bailing out irresponsible borrowers.

Now, it’s applying the same destructive, redistributionist philosophy to credit cards.

Commercial lawyer John Hinderaker notes that with Obama’s support, “Congress has just enacted new credit card regulations intended to limit banks’ ability to collect money from distressed…

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The “tea party” protests against out-of-control government spending have been very clear in identifying what wasteful spending they object to. One example is Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package, which was falsely sold to the public as needed to prevent “irreversible decline,” but which the Congressional Budget Office repeatedly pointed out would actually cut the size of the economy “in the long run.” Another example is the Obama Administration’s mortgage bailout, which would benefit even high-income people with modest mortgages (see the “I can’t afford…

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The Obama Administration’s mortgage bailout for irresponsible borrowers (including wealthy borrowers with modest mortgage payments) provides a bounty for reckless sub-prime mortgage lenders like Countrywide to rip off your retirement plan. Countrywide sold its junky mortgages on Wall Street, where they ended up being owned by mutual funds that probably are in your 401(K). But it continued to service the mortgages and make money doing so.

Now, the Obama Administration is offering Countrywide $1000 to cut each of those mortgages — which it…

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“The president of the European Union on Wednesday slammed U.S. plans to spend its way out of recession as ‘a road to hell.’ Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, told the European Parliament that President Barack Obama’s massive stimulus package and banking bailout ‘will undermine the liquidity of the global financial market.’”

There’s “one small problem with Geithner’s plan: It will bankrupt the banks,” says analyst Henry Blodgett, triggering a chain reaction of write-offs.…

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Obama gets a failing grade from economists. “U.S. President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner received failing grades for their efforts to revive the economy from participants in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey.”

Not content with the $8 trillion the Obama Administration has already committed for bailouts, pork, and welfare, Treasury Secretary Geithner, who was confirmed by the Senate despite cheating on his taxes, wants to spend $100 billion on IMF loans to bail out struggling nations in Eastern Europe and elsewhere…

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Well-to-do people will receive an unnecessary mortgage bailout, under a new federal program that will cut their payments to just 31 percent of their income — a ridiculously low level lower than many thrifty homeowners have made for years. Taxpayers and the economy will suffer in the long-run. And people with modest incomes will end up subsidizing the more fortunate.

Yesterday, the Obama Administration announced a “mortgage bailout to aid 1 in 9 U.S. Homeowners,” according to today’s Wall Street…

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The stimulus package will gut welfare reform even more than previously feared. That’s the conclusion of Mickey Kaus, a moderate Democrat who now appears to regret voting for Obama. The stimulus package will reward states that promote welfare dependency, even more than federal subsidies did before the 1996 welfare reform law, and reduce economic growth.

Clayton Cramer notes that the stimulus package is being sold to the public under the false pretense that without it, we will go into another Great Depression, even though Congressional leaders…

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As economists and the Wall Street Journal have noted, the Community Reinvestment Act was an important ingredient of the financial crisis, by pressuring banks to make risky loans to people in low-income, predominantly-minority neighborhoods, even if such loans were unlikely to be repaid. Now those loans, which were economically unjustifiable, are defaulting, resulting in pain for both banks and borrowers alike.

So what does the New York Times recommend as a solution? To “strengthen” and expand the Community Reinvestment Act’s provisions…

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Banks get sued for discrimination no matter what they do.  If they don’t make enough loans in low-income, predominantly minority neighborhoods, they get accused of “redlining,” and are subject to sanctions under politically-correct laws like the Community Reinvestment Act, which contributed to the financial crisis by pressuring lenders to make risky mortgage loans. 

But if they do make such loans, they get accused of “reverse redlining,” and get sued by the liberal special-interest groups and municipalities that encouraged them to make such loans during the mortgage bubble.  Baltimore and various…

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Even the liberal Washington Post (which has endorsed the more liberal candidate in every presidential election since 1952) points out that the “free market” is not to blame for the recent financial meltdown – a point also made in the conservative Washington Examiner and the liberal Village Voice.

“The market that failed was not exactly free,” notes its editorial:

The deregulation of U.S. financial markets did not reflect only the narrow ideology of a particular party or administration. And the problem with the U.S. economy, more…

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At least in its original form, the $700 billion bailout bill was unconstitutional because it gave the Treasury Secretary boundless discretion to buy, or not buy, bad loans at whatever suited his whims, without providing for judicial review.  More recent versions of the financial-system bailout bill may have added a little bit of judicial oversight (rendered almost meaningless by virtue of the minimal, vague, and conflicting statutory criteria they provide), but they have not changed the fact that the bill remains…

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The proposed $700 billion bailout is “dangerous, inflationary, unnecessary, and unconstitutional,” funds left-wing special-interest groups, ignores less costly ways of propping up financial markets, and fails to consider regulatory reforms that might reduce the need for a bailout.  It’s not clear why we should trust federal officials with $700 billion to buy up bad loans, without any clear standards or judicial oversight, given that governmental incompetence and government regulations (such as affordable housing mandates) helped spawn the mortgage crisis.  Many economists oppose the proposed bailout.

But some lending practices are…

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The stock market sank as the Bush Administration capitulated to liberal demands that its proposed $700 billion bailout of the financial system be expanded to add more costly give-aways, like “systematic” limits on foreclosure, that would allow irresponsible borrowers to remain in their homes at taxpayer expense.   The bailout is so extreme that it is unconstitutional.

Because of rigid federal accounting regulations that require Enron-style “mark-to-market accounting,” the bailout could actually deepen the financial crisis.  The bailout will reduce economic growth over the long run, and is logically inconsistent.

The bailout rips off people who lived within…

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