Comments hypocritical

To the editor:

The hypocritical audacity of Alice Rivlin's guest opinion (Friday, Jan. 8) was astounding. Alice, a former member of the FED and CBO, stated that "The big lesson of 2009 was that financial panic can be catastrophic for the economy if caused by a bursting housing bubble with an enormously overleveraged financial structure perched on top of it. That sounds obvious, but the best minds of our economy didn't see it coming."

Apparently Bush and his treasury secretary don't count as our best minds because for over four years before the collapse they repeatedly warned Congress that they needed to tighten regulations on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to keep the bubble from busting. McCain even sponsored legislation that Congress ignored. As a prominent economist she had to know this.

During this same period our Senator Birch Evans Bayh III sat on the Senate Banking Committee which oversees these financial institutions. He also did nothing about the problem but accepted over $40,000 in contributions from these businesses during his tenure on the committee.

Stephen Erwin

Portland[[In-content Ad]]