It's too Easy

It's too easy to find recurring examples of Republican hypocrisy. It really is.

December 17, 2010, 9:21 am
Fannie Freddie Forked Tongue
by Paul Krugman

Oh, my. As I pointed out in today’s column, Republicans on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission are pushing a false story — that Fannie and Freddie, by pushing loans to low-income buyers, created the housing bubble and hence the crisis.

The right way to refute this story is to point to all the contrary evidence. But catching the commissioners in some rank hypocrisy can’t hurt.

And sure enough, Richard Green points us to this 2006 article by Peter Wallison in which he attacks Fannie and Freddie for … not doing enough to promote borrowing by low-income home buyers:

There are many lenders aggressively competing to make the higher-amount loans, and the GSEs are not doing the job they should for low-income homebuyers.

Fannie and Freddie should do a much better job of providing affordable home financing to a neglected portion of the mortgage market.

Less than a year after that article was published, by the way, the subprime meltdown began.

So, a quick summary: the Republican position is that Fannie and Freddie caused the bubble by doing what we said they should be doing but denounced them, at the peak of the bubble, for not doing. Got it?