Getting Their Scapegoat

'It's telling that, amid all the recent recriminations, even lenders have not fingered CRA. That's because CRA didn't bring about the reckless lending at the heart of the crisis. Just as sub-prime lending was exploding, CRA was losing force and relevance. And the worst offenders, the independent mortgage companies, were never subject to CRA--or any federal regulator. Law didn't make them lend. The profit motive did."

Back in April 2008, Robert Gordon in The American Prospect explained how off-base conservatives are in trying to blame sub-prime mortgage failures on federal regulation.

And David Goldstein and Kevin G. Hall of McClatchy Newspapers show how "the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis."