In response to Lawrence White's article

Here's this most enlightening article that the right is now using to point fingers at the left.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/bp/html/bp110/bp110index.html

I have a few contentions.
His view is that government policy like the Community Reinvestment Act of 77 distorted financial housing markets.

Right off the bat the  argues that that greed doesn't explain the crisis and that a market run amok doesn't explain it. Uhhh...no. Greed Drives financial markets. Greed is at the center of markets. How was lending money to subprime borrowers any more more insane than say the tech bubble syndrome of buying stock in a tiny unprofitable web-based tech company??? The longer securities performed the more demand, no?. So in the case of housing: stock market crash caused people to invest in housing, remember that? high demand, mortage issuers who by the way DONT deal with RISK  but still MAKE THE FEES therefore dont care about the toxicity of their securities issue NINAS and all that shit. the problem is systemic. If it were the fault of programs like the CRA how do you explain that subprimes were made by independent mortgage companies fully outside CRA’s jurisdiction like a quarter century after the CRA was enacted?? These mortagage issuers were fell outside of the CRA jurisdiction and continued to make high priced loans at more than TWICE the rate of banks and thrifts. Bottom line: If government was FORCING lending institutions be unprofitable, which doesn't even make any fu***** sense to me, wouldnt these lending institutions have raised hell and also this whole conversation about the bailout wouldn't be "government bailout of irresponsible lending".
 
Who are these people with jobs teaching economics?