Probably the greatest blunder of the Obama White House over the past two years has been its abject failure to make certain the public understood that it was conservative misgovernance that was at the root of the great economic meltdown of 2008 -- especially because it was that very downturn that propelled him into office.
That failure has functionally given conservatives -- the architects of the disaster -- the ability to cover their tracks by erecting a narrative in which the blame was instead laid at the doorstep of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and minority-lending programs. And that narrative is now widely believed by over half the country.
Now the Washington Times is trying to muddy the water even further, running a bizarre and thinly sourced piece claiming that perhaps terrorism -- maybe even Chinese terrorists, colluding with radical Islamists, perhaps? -- were actually behind the meltdown.
Evidence outlined in a Pentagon contractor report suggests that financial subversion carried out by unknown parties, such as terrorists or hostile nations, contributed to the 2008 economic crash by covertly using vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system.
The unclassified 2009 report “Economic Warfare: Risks and Responses” by financial analyst Kevin D. Freeman, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, states that “a three-phased attack was planned and is in the process against the United States economy.”
But as you can see from reading the piece, Freeman presents no evidence other than the economic catastrophes themselves that these were terrorist attacks. Indeed, it's nothing but unadulterated wild speculation from start to finish.
Nonetheless, Megyn Kelly invited Freeman onto her Fox News yesterday and treated it as if it were potentially the biggest story in the whole wide world. She was duly wowed -- even though, as you can see, Freeman couldn't even tell her whether these were Chinese terrorists or Islamic radicals, or mebbe they were working in collusion! (As if!)
No wonder everyone involved in analyzing the markets is pretty much laughing at Freeman and the reporters who gobbled up this nonsense so gullibly.
Then, of course, Kelly capped it all off with the classic "minority lending programs did it" narrative as the safe story everyone believes:
KELLY: But how could they have done it? Because, you know, I think the conventional wisdom in this country is, uh, you know, you had Fannie and Freddie giving out tons of mortgages that never should have been given out, then you had the Wall Street folks trading these so-called credit default swaps, basically doubling down on the bad investments, and ultimately things just started to implode in a way where, you know, we had to step in, the government bailed out those banks, and we all know the history that happened after there.
That's a pretty remarkably dense thicket of lies that have little or no relationship to reality whatsoever. Let's try to unpack it a little:
