I really shouldn't be shocked by now at the willingness of conservatives to blame minorities for their problems, beyond all reason. But there's still something surprising about a sitting member of Congress blaming the credit crisis on people of color, even if it's Michelle Bachmann.
This argument is simply empirically wrong. What caused the crisis was bad mortgages being integrated into the global financial system through their sale as securities. The CRA wasn't responsible for most sub-prime loans and, as Steven Bainbridge points out, most sub-prime loans went to whites. Bainbridge adds that people like Bachmann make him "embarrassed to be a conservative." That's good to hear, but I can't help but wonder why conservatives want to keep discrediting themselves by employing racism as a simple answer to complicated questions.
--A. Serwer
