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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Bank of America recently announced that it will impose annual fees on some of its cardholders.  This is in response to the CARD Act (Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009), which effectively shifts costs to responsible people from irresponsible people, forcing banks to increase charges to responsible credit card holders.

The CARD Act has also wiped out many cash-back and rewards programs and rebates on credit cards, something earlier chronicled here.  Despite that fact, its passage was trumpeted by President Obama…

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George Mason University Professor Ilya Somin explains how the Obama administration is expanding the awful policies that caused the mortgage crisis, like having taxpayers effectively underwrite risky-mortgage loans by bailing out GSEs at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.  Now, the administration is stepping up Federal Housing Administration subsidies for risky, junky mortgage loans that are likely to default in large numbers.

(The Obama administration doesn’t seem to have learned history’s lessons overseas, either.  White House Communications Director Anita Dunn cites as…

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The chief financial officer of mortgage giant Freddie Mac committed suicide today in his basement. The Obama Administration forced Freddie Mac to run up billions of dollars in losses to bail out mortgage borrowers, including irresponsible high-income households with modest mortgages.

Until last year, Freddie Mac was a GSE — a Government Sponsored Enterprise, an entity chartered and subsidized by the federal government, but owned by private shareholders. But the federal government seized direct control of Freddie Mac last year after it ran up big…

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Insurance giant AIG, bailed out by taxpayers for $170 billion, is using taxpayer money to pay executives in the division that brought it to the brink of collapse millions of dollars in bonuses! (AIG may have hoped its donations to liberal politicians, such as $103,100 to Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) in 2008 alone, would shield it from scrutiny).

The Senate voted down an amendment by Jeff Sessions (R-AL) that would have kept federal stimulus money from hiring illegal aliens, resulting in up to 300,000 jobs being filled by…

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