Myth 1
There has been no official bipartisan consensus on the causes of the financial crisis:
An official government report was produced in April 2011 by the Senate
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Chairman Carl Levin
(D-MI) and Ranking Member Tom Coburn (R-OK), titled Wall Street and the
Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse. The “Levin-Coburn
Report,” a 639-page document, including 2,849 footnotes unanimously and
unambiguously concluded that “the [2008] crisis was not a natural
disaster, but the result of high risk, complex financial products;
undisclosed conflicts of interest; and the failure of regulators, the
credit rating agencies, and the market itself to rein in the excesses of
Wall Street.”
This myth got traction in January 2011, when after conducting over
five hundred interviews and holding twelve days of hearings, the
Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) failed to produce a unified
report. The 545-page book the panel did publish, titled The Financial
Crisis Inquiry Report: Final Report of the National Commission on the
Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States, had
three sections. The first part was a lengthy majority report endorsed by
the six Democratic appointees. This was followed by two much shorter
dissents. Reading the three parts together, it is clear that all ten
commissioners agreed that the collapse of the U.S. housing bubble was
the proximate cause of the crisis.
In addition, there was
substantial consensus among nine of the commissioners. For these
nine—including three of the four Republican appointees—the centerpiece
of the consensus was that poor risk management at U.S. financial
institutions was a chief contributor to the crisis. For example, all
nine agreed that risk management failures at financial institutions led
to insufficient capital and a reliance on short-term borrowing.
http://www.salon.com/2014/05/25/toxic_bankers_captive_regulators_everything_you_think_about_the_housing_market_is_wrong/
