The American Spectator

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p> GO FOR THE GOLD br> Re: Matthew Vadum's Financial Affirmative Action : /p>

I agree that government meddling in the markets is a root cause of the current mess, but is it only the fault of the freako left?

I live in California, one of the epicenters of the meltdown, and I can tell you nobody was holding a gun on the developers and brokers.

And right up until the kaboom, they were all singing: "Get it built and get it sold, close the deal and get the gold!"

The brokers knew perfectly well how many of the "buyers" were bad risks-so did the buyers. So did the guys who bundled these time bombs and turned them into "derivatives" that nobody understood.

Ah, but THEY did! They understood that they would be in court for prejudice if they didn't sell, and in court for fraud if they did. The only safe path was a product that nobody really understood -- that is, being able to prove they didn't know what they were doing in the first place.

The CFO version of the Nuremberg defense -- shades of Ayn Rand!

p>Nobel laureate Sir V.S. Naipaul once described the welfare state as a country drawn into a conspiracy against itself. Too bad we can't get him to run the Treasury Department. br> -- Martin Owens

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