Recall months ago when the financial crisis first kicked off? Every liberal jackass with a keyboard, camera or microphone was shouting “blame Bush.” Their mantra. Their favorite target for blame of all things wrong in the world. It hasn’t stopped. It won’t stop. In fact, they continue to blame Bush – despite the fact that the “Bush killed the economy” meme has been proven time and again to be nothing more than rubbish. Having failed, utterly and completely, to successfully pin the current recession on Bush, they must find another to blame.

Presto! In comes noted liberal media hack Paul Krugman with a novel idea. Dust off the old meme to replace the current meme. Paul declares, in an Op-Ed piece for the New York Slimes, that it’s Reagan’s fault. Yup, blame Ronald Reagan. The former president that hasn’t been in office in more than 20 years is the cause of our economic woes. At least according to Krugman. He points specifically to the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act. However, in typical liberal fashion Paul shows no interest in personal responsibility, common sense or the lunacy of his own kind.

Unfortunately for Krugman, this tact will work no better than the last. I’m sorry, but fact and common sense have Reagan’s back here.

For the more one looks into the origins of the current disaster, the clearer it becomes that the key wrong turn — the turn that made crisis inevitable — took place in the early 1980s, during the Reagan years.

Attacks on Reaganomics usually focus on rising inequality and fiscal irresponsibility. Indeed, Reagan ushered in an era in which a small minority grew vastly rich, while working families saw only meager gains. He also broke with longstanding rules of fiscal prudence.

Utterly predictable. Class warfare primer. Typical of a hack who has absolutely no real clue as to what he’s talking about. Either that or does know, but like most of his other liberal media hack counterparts, refuses to actually address the real issue. Instead he throws mud at one of America’s greatest presidents.

Not to mention the laughability of a card-carrying liberal wanting to talk about fiscal prudence. Ha!

traditionally, the U.S. government ran significant budget deficits only in times of war or economic emergency. Federal debt as a percentage of G.D.P. fell steadily from the end of World War II until 1980. But indebtedness began rising under Reagan; it fell again in the Clinton years, but resumed its rise under the Bush administration, leaving us ill prepared for the emergency now upon us.

Sorry, Paul. You shot yourself in your own foot. You state that Reagan broke fiscal prudence… yet in the next sentence say that he didn’t. When Reagan came into office he had to contend with the hell of a mess that Jimmy Carter had left. Remember those times, Paul? I am certain that you are old enough. Carter left the country in a state of economic emergency. Reagan had to clean it up.

The Clinton administration helped set the proverbial ball in motion for our current economic woes with his expansion of the CRA. Of course, you leave that bit out. You didn’t miss the shot at Bush though, did ya? Unfortunately, you hamstrung yourself again in the same statement. ” …only in times of war or economic emergency.” Last time I checked we were at war for seven of Bush’s eight years. I know that math is hard, Paul. But try putting two and two together.

but the fact is that deregulation in effect gave the industry — whose deposits were federally insured — a license to gamble with taxpayers’ money, at best, or simply to loot it, at worst. By the time the government closed the books on the affair, taxpayers had lost $130 billion, back when that was a lot of money.

So what you’re saying here, Paul, is that the S&L crisis had nothing to do with removing the abused tax incentives for holding onto devaluing properties? No? How about the risky and poor lending practices of many banks for mortgages (sound familiar)? Or perhaps the skyrocketing interests rates and complete end to inflation? No? Tell you what, Krugman, go get yourself a history book and an econ 101 book… read them. It might help you out a bit, but I doubt it.

But there was also a longer-term effect. Reagan-era legislative changes essentially ended New Deal restrictions on mortgage lending — restrictions that, in particular, limited the ability of families to buy homes without putting a significant amount of money down.

Thank God for that! New Deal economics were a complete failure. Not to mention that due to the raised cost of living it was becoming increasingly harder to “save” money for a house. Especially with escalating land and house prices. Which means a drop in the housing market… You know, kind of like what happened to us last year. As for ARM loans, they are a financial instrument that wasn’t designed for long term. Irregardless of that, the person who signs it is responsible. They know what they’re getting into. They know the risks. If the person chooses to take the risk and they fall on their face… well, they have no one to blame but themselves. Oh wait, they can blame Reagan or Bush for their own stupidity, right?

Together with looser lending standards for other kinds of consumer credit, this led to a radical change in American behavior.

How about a distancing from a sense of personal responsibility? How about a sense of fiscal responsibility? You know, don’t buy it if you can’t pay for it? You know about those things, right Paul? Perhaps if you statist idiots stopped telling people that they aren’t responsible for themselves, they might actually take responsibility. Perhaps if your liberal ilk started displaying some fiscal responsibility and stopped acting like money is free and like you can always milk the rich, people might start showing some responsibility themselves.

It was only after the Reagan deregulation that thrift gradually disappeared from the American way of life, culminating in the near-zero savings rate that prevailed on the eve of the great crisis. Household debt was only 60 percent of income when Reagan took office, about the same as it was during the Kennedy administration. By 2007 it was up to 119 percent.

Rigggghhhhhtttt. It’s Reagan’s fault that people made their own decisions. Damn him for creating an investor friendly market that generated the biggest boom in American industry and GDP in decades, right? It’s Reagan’s fault that people saw an opportunity and decided to take it… because it was far better than tucking money under a mattress. Instead they invested it in more jobs, entrepreneurs and inventions. What happens when people don’t invest? The market fails and so does our economy. Been watching ANY news for the last 8-9 months, Paul?

Reagan did us a great disservice by providing much needed economic growth and opportunity. It is his fault that some people failed, right?

But it was the explosion of debt over the previous quarter-century that made the U.S. economy so vulnerable. Overstretched borrowers were bound to start defaulting in large numbers once the housing bubble burst and unemployment began to rise.

These defaults in turn wreaked havoc with a financial system that — also mainly thanks to Reagan-era deregulation — took on too much risk with too little capital.

Perhaps, if the politically greedy and expedient liberals in Congress and the White House hadn’t abused the free market and forced banks to make bad loans… those defaults wouldn’t have happened? Maybe, if the statist idiots had shown a modicum of common sense they wouldn’t have forced the CRA down the lenders’ throats. Just maybe if those same morons hadn’t instructed Freddie and Fannie to back those bad loans, and then actually monitored the entities, listened to the watch dogs – instead of silencing them, and had the spine to do their actual jobs… Freddie and Fannie wouldn’t have polluted the market with “government backed securities” – because those were federally insured. If they weren’t federally insured, then they wouldn’t have been bought up the way that they were – which creates more demand for them, and thus more high-risk loans generated.

There’s plenty of blame to go around these days. But the prime villains behind the mess we’re in were Reagan and his circle of advisers — men who forgot the lessons of America’s last great financial crisis, and condemned the rest of us to repeat it.

There certainly is a whole metric truck ton of blame to go around. However, Paul, it doesn’t belong on the shoulders of Reagan. No, it belongs squarely on the statist jackasses like Barney Frank, who didn’t do their jobs lest they not get paid by the Johnsons and Raines of the industry. No, they chose political expedience over the American people. It seems that it is the Democrats and liberals that have forgotten – or never even acknowledged – the lessons of the Great Depression. So rather than pulling out an old “blame game” handbook, how about for once, just once, you actually try the truth on for size. You might like it.