White House Slams NY Times For It's "Irresponsible" Housing Hit Piece

The last 5 years of Bush-bashing have not been kind to The New York Times.

But, that has not stopped the paper from pursuing its agenda.

Today, the NY Times published a front page hit piece on the Bush Administration that was so irresponsible that it forced the administration to respond.
Never mind about all those years he tried to get Congress to address the housing crisis, the NY Times rewrites history.
The White House reported:

Most people can accept that a news story recounting recent events will be reliant on ’20-20 hindsight’. Today’s front-page New York Times story relies on hindsight with blinders on and one eye closed.

The Times’ ‘reporting’ in this story amounted to finding selected quotes to support a story the reporters fully intended to write from the onset, while disregarding anything that didn’t fit their point of view. To prove the point, when they filed their story, NYT reporters were completely unfamiliar with the President’s prime time address to the nation where he laid out in detail all of the causes of the housing and financial crises. For example, the President highlighted a factor that economists agree on: that the most significant factor leading to the housing crisis was cheap money flowing into the U.S. from the rest of the world, so that there was no natural restraint on flush lenders to push loans on Americans in risky ways. This flow of funds into the U.S. was unprecedented. And because it was unprecedented, the conditions it created presented unprecedented questions for policymakers.

In his address the President also explained in detail the failure of financial institutions to perform normal and necessary due diligence in creating, buying and selling new financial products — a problem that almost no one saw as it was happening.

That the NYT ignored such an important economic speech to the American people and the complex causes of the crises is gross negligence.

The Times story frequently repeats a charge by the Administration’s critics: a ‘laissez faire’ attitude toward regulation. We make no apology for understanding the concept of regulatory balance. That is, regulation should be stringent enough to protect the greater public good and safety but not overly strong so that it unnecessarily inhibits innovation, creativity and productivity gains that are the sole source of increasing Americans’ standards of living. But while repeating this charge, the reporters gave glancing attention to the fact that it was this Administration that pushed for strengthened regulation and oversight, greater transparency, and housing reform.

The story also gives kid glove treatment to Congress. While the Administration was pushing for more transparent lending rules and strengthening oversight and supervision of Fannie and Freddie, Congress for years blocked attempts at stronger regulation and blocked reform of the Federal Housing Administration. Democratic leaders brazenly encouraged Fannie and Freddie to loosen lending standards and instead encouraged the housing GSEs to play a larger and larger role in the housing market — even while explicitly acknowledging the rising risks. And while the story notes the political contributions of some banks to Republicans, it neglects that political contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac overwhelmingly supported Democratic officials — in particular the chairmen of the banking committees. In fact, even in the midst of what by then was a housing crisis, it took Congress nearly a full year to pass specific legislation called for by the President in the summer of 2007, especially legislation to reform oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

President Bush called for reform of Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac 17 Times in 2008 alone…
The Democratic Congress ignored the warnings.

Democrats defended Fannie and Freddie several times including this infamous Congressional hearing back in 2004:

Democrats were also the top recipients of Fannie and Freddie campaign donations.

For some reason these facts did not make it into today’s NY Times’ article.

Obviously, if Democrats really believed that Republicans were responsible for the housing crisis we would be seeing mock show trial after mock show trial in front of the various Congressional committees.
We are not seeing that today.
That should tell you something.

Photo of author
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016. In 2023, The Gateway Pundit received the Most Trusted Print Media Award at the American Liberty Awards.

You can email Jim Hoft here, and read more of Jim Hoft's articles here.

 

Thanks for sharing!