Bad History, Worse Policy: How a False Narrative About the Financial Crisis Led to the Dodd-Frank Act
I don’t remember any period in modern history when the analysis of historic economic events has been more dominated by the clear thinking of one person. That person’s name is Peter Wallison. He has dispelled more myths and provided more insights than all other scholars and commentators combined. If you want to know what triggered the financial crisis and why Federal policy misdiagnosed both the illness and the appropriate treatment, all you have to do is read this book.(Phil Gramm, Former Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and Senior Partner of US Policy Metrics)This book is indispensable reading for anyone seeking to understand the actual causes of the financial crisis and why the Dodd-Frank Act should be reconsidered. Peter Wallison reveals how government failures, not market failures, produced the financial crisis. With sound logic and solid evidence, he explains how the Left’s blind faith in unaccountable regulators and its institutionalization of government bailouts have made our financial system less safe. Peter Wallison was right on the dangers posed by the GSEs; in time he will also be proven right on the origins of the financial crisis and the flaws of the Dodd-Frank Act.(Senator Richard C. Shelby, (R-AL) Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs)In a sense, this volume consists of two books. One is a compilation of 30 essays written from 2004 to 2012 by Wallison (fellow and codirector, American Enterprise Institute's program on financial policy studies) for the "Financial Services Outlook" series. The essays are divided into three topical sections: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and other government-sponsored enterprises, the financial crisis, and a critique of the Dodd-Frank Act. The second, shorter book consists of original narratives introducing each section, plus an introductory and a concluding chapter showing how provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act are based on flawed premises about causes of the financial breakdown beginning in 2007, and suggesting section-by-section changes to the act. The former book provides an account of the financial crisis beginning in 2007 as it developed; the latter, an interpretation of those events with the benefit of hindsight. This volume is polemical in dealing with this topic. General readers; students, upper-division undergraduate and up; professionals.(CHOICE)