governments can afford. and so when we talk about getting ready for the future, when we talk about reducing the deficits, absolutely we need to focus on the deficit. but let s focus on all the deficits. let s focus on the deficit represented when bridges are on the brink of collapse as well. and those investments pay off for the economy, and that means they ultimately pay off for the taxpayer. and gretchen morguenson, your book, reckless endangerment, describes in great detail the makings of an economic free fall. and here we go again, or how would you leave it? i m not going to say it s happening tomorrow. but we have not put our house in order, unfortunately, and now we have the extra problem of europe which really does seem to be deteriorating fast. the potential for china to have a slowdown. it really is kind of a perfect storm, to use a tired
chris: is he being too easy on himself? certainly, he is. he is not only late in recognizing the problem, he did many things perhaps with good intentions to help create the problem. he was pushing lax lending standards. doing all of the things that set the stage for private entities to come in and try to compete with fannie and freddie. in a way that i think led to the financial crisis of 2008. there is a moment in gretchen morguenson s book reckless endangerment where she describes a reporter going up to barney frank after a speech in 2005 and asking the questions, you know, what about the possibility that you could be pushing people to mortgages they can t afford? what would the consequences be? he said rather flippantly, we ll deal with that problem if it happens. well, you know, this is the kind of legislating with the best of intention and not speaking of the long-term consequences that will make the first line in barney frank s political epitath be the housing crisis.
in the minority. chris: is he being too easy on himself? certainly, he is. he is not only late in recognizing the problem, he did many things perhaps with good intentions to help create the problem. he was pushing lax lending standards. doing all of the things that set the stage for private entities to come in and try to compete with fannie and freddie. in a way that i think led to the financial crisis of 2008. there is a moment in gretchen morguenson s book reckless endangerment where she describes a reporter going up to barney frank after a speech in 2005 and asking the questions, you know, what about the possibility that you could be pushing people to mortgages they can t afford? what would the consequences be? he said rather flippantly, we ll deal with that problem if it happens. well, you know, this is the kind of legislating with the best of intention and not speaking of the long-term consequences that will make the first line in barney frank s political epitath be
this is a blip on the screen. why hasn t there been criminal accountability? well look. there s been a complete lack of accountability. that s what, the great thing about being attorney general. in a little state, but an attorney general s job is to make sure there is accountability and that is why the ags, margaritaa cokely in massachusetts, nevada, a hard hit state on mortgage foreclosure issues, we re following the facts where they take us and some people don t want us to look at the facts of this. right. look, we can t you ve had all of these reporters on this show whether gretchen morguenson or michael lewis. we can t rely on them to do the investigation of this crisis. i m not going to be in public office. it s not worth it to be in public office when you have an investigative capacity to not look at what happened. the american people don t understand what happened. it s not that complicated. i ve gone to school over the last 14 months. it is easy to understand i m