[oldembed src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mPXVZONjqek" width="450" height="335" resize="1" fid="21"]
Looks like Bloomberg decided to carry a little water for his fellow one percenters on Wall Street by repeating the zombie lie that Fannie and Freddie caused the subprime housing bubble -- Mayor Bloomberg: ‘It Was Not The Banks That Created The Mortgage Crisis’:
A favorite conservative pastime since the financial crisis of 2008 struck is to try and deflect blame away from Wall Street and its excesses and onto Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and government housing policy. No matter how many times the theory that the government mortgage giants caused the crisis gets debunked, it keeps on coming back to life.
The latest political figure to join this parade was New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I), who responded to a question about the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests by saying that the protesters’ grievances are “unfounded,” since “it was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis“:
“I hear your complaints,” Bloomberg said. “Some of them are totally unfounded. It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, Congress, who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp. Now, I’m not so sure that was terrible policy, because a lot of those people who got homes still have them and they wouldn’t have had them without that.
“But they were the ones who pushed Fannie and Freddie to make a bunch of loans that were imprudent, if you will. They were the ones that pushed the banks to loan to everybody. And now we want to go vilify the banks because it’s one target, it’s easy to blame them and Congress certainly isn’t going to blame themselves.”
As Digby noted, Mayor 1% joins the Limbaugh chorus:
Yeah. Let's not play the blame game. (Well, except we do need to teach the silly serfs --- who took loans from people who were offering them --- a lesson they won't soon forget.) [...]
The key is to ensure that the dizzy bimbos of the press, who worship his alleged "moderation", don't see his endorsement of this toxic rightwing propaganda as if it came down from Mt. Sinai.
I think this is a signal that the 1%ers are getting agitated for real (as opposed to the crocodile tears they shed everyday about being called "fat cats" by their friends in the White House.) Bloomberg has always been one of them, of course, but he's been the designated moderate, put out there to pretend that they give a damn about the peasants. He's joined the Limbaugh crowd with this one.
