God help us all...

Barney Frank in 2005 — Bubble? What bubble?:

"His “Bubble? What bubble?” performance in June 2005 should become required viewing for anyone who wants the real history of how the economy collapsed. In another addition to the Someone Left The Irony On Department, Frank scolds the people behind the dot-com bubble for not having realistic business plans while Frank protected Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from regulators who warned that the two GSEs had the same exact problem. And Frank was right that the housing collapse wouldn’t be as bad as the dot-com pop — but in fact it was much, much worse, thanks to Congressional action that mandated the creation of mortgage-backed securities that spread the poison of bad loans throughout the global financial system. The dot-com bubble burst resulted in a mild recession, but Frank’s supposedly-impossible housing bubble collapse sent the entire world economy crashing into a heap."