The amount of misinformation about the economic crisis is truly incredible. It's comparable to being in the middle of a hurricane and hearing the weather report say that it is bright and sunny. We are in the middle of an economic crisis because Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke either could not see an $8 trillion housing bubble or somehow did not realize that its collapse would be a big deal. That's it. It's real simple. The Fed blew it as badly as it possibly could. It committed a disastrous error in the clear light of day that anyone could see. So, why is the Post telling us that: "the [financial] industry is rolling back loose lending standards that led to the mortgage meltdown and the subsequent economic crisis"? Yes, there was loose lending that helped inflate the bubble to greater levels than would have otherwise been possible. But the bubble (which remarkably goes unmentioned in this piece) was central in this story. This is the sort of reporting that the public has come to expect from the Washington Post (a.k.a. "Fox on 15th Street).
--Dean Baker
