What the financial markets needed from Congress last Monday was a sense of confidence and leadership, to see that somebody was in charge and moving to find a solution. What they got was uncertainty and chaos. The outcome of Monday’s ‘no’ vote was a market freefall, which came as a result of Congress’ failure to solidify an agreement before the vote took place.

No one is pleased that we now have to use taxpayer dollars to help fix this mess. But Rep. Bachmann’s two ‘no’ votes on last week’s economic rescue bills demonstrate an unwillingness to put the needs of Main Street before her own political reputation.

In the wake of this bailout, we need to focus on addressing the underlying problems that contributed to the meltdown. Rep. Bachmann maintained at our debate last week that the mortgage crisis is a result of “too much regulation,” especially from the Community Reinvestment Act, which as she said earlier, forced lenders to make loans “on the basis of race and often on little else.”

As Congressman Keith Ellison from our neighboring Fifth District in Minnesota said, “To suggest that the greatest financial crisis we have faced since the Great Depression was caused by legislation that was created to help prevent low-income individuals from assuming high-cost, subprime loans that have caused the crisis today is absurd.”

At the very least, Bachmann’s response ignores the documented corruption and “boiler room” culture of the lenders who explicitly took advantage of people and profited. I found this Columbia Journalism Review article a bracing reminder. While we can’t reduce the mortgage crisis to a single cause, let’s remember to give credit where credit is due when we’re figuring out how to help keep people in their homes.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 3:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized .