"No," she said.

It has long been my opinion that the current "mortgage meltdown" resulted directly from Democrats pushing banks to lend money to people who they should not have. Today, Hans Bader has a piece on OpenMarket.org that sets out this idea quite well.

Funny enough, when asked today if Democrats bore any responsibility for this, Nancy Pelosi set us all straight with a firm "No."

Thanks, Nan.

She went on to inform us that “I think the American people have had it with this situation where the middle-income people in our country are not protected from the ramifications of the risk-taking and the greed of these financial institutions,”

Well that's just special, isn't it? The very behavior she's now calling risk taking and greed was, and probably still is, also labelled "making home ownership more affordable for low income people." These loans by definition include more risk for the financial institution. Granted, I would guess that Aunt Nancy thinks it "greedy" of them to foreclose on these loans when the borrowers default. Apparently banks should be like big money libraries with no late fines.

Not so much. Banks have ways of identifiying acceptable and unacceptable risks, and lending accordingly. Things go just fine until politicians decide to "manage" the economy. Banks, not being stupid, seek to get as favorable a deal as possible when they are about to be "managed" and you end up with corruption. By pushing them to lend money they never would or should have, this weighing and balancing is thrown off.

Look, I'm not an economist, but you know who is? Thomas Sowell:

"In other words, government laws and policies at federal, state, and local levels have had the net effect of putting both borrowers and lenders way out on a limb."

Here's what it comes down to: If you think Democrats will do a better job of "managing" the economy than Republicans, you may be right, but that doesn't mean "management" is a good thing. People like Aunt Nan use the term "management" because it sounds professional, but the fact is there is not a single soul in Congress or on this planet that could actually "manage" our economy. Far more often Congressional "management" is the equivalent of pounding a twelve pack and going to work on your car's transmission.

Oh yeah, and government bailouts will actually encourage foreclosure.

The real problem with our economy, and the one that no one wants to talk about because it is boring as hell, is that our monetary policy is a joke. Even I'm not getting into that.