Phil Gramm, the Oprah Winfrey of sub-prime mortgages

Remember Phil Gramm, the economic conservative’s economic conservative? A friend called and asked me to look up Time magazine’s article on the twenty-five individuals most responsible for the financial crisis. Instead I came upon the Guardian’s January 26 article, “Twenty-five people at the heart of the meltdown …” from which Time evidently got the idea for its article. Among the twenty-five, whom do I see but Mr. Gimlet-eyed, reptilian-skinned, totally lacking in sympathy and personality, with an accent that made your teeth hurt, hard-line economic conservative himself, the former U.S. senator from Texas, who told the Senate in 2001:

“Some people look at sub-prime lending and see evil. I look at sub-prime lending and I see the American dream in action.”

First, I’m stunned. That’s the kind of irresponsible sentimental nonsense I would expect from the likes of G.W. Bush and Mel Martinez, Bush’s housing secretary in his first term, who pushed Bush’s “American Dream Down Payment Plan” that helped create the current crisis (see below). But coming from Gramm, the man thought to have an eye only for the bottom line? It suggests a total intellectual corruption. But the thought occurs to me that if you lack all cultural and moral reference points and care only about the economy, as Gramm boasted of himself, then maybe you lack the moral or common sense to see the wrongness of giving unearned mortgages to people and calling this the American dream in action.

Second, one way back to intellectual and financial probity in this country is to stop this sickening habit of referring to people’s goals and ambitions as “dreams,” a silliness unworthy of a ten year old, let alone of an adult. I have actually seen news articles about murder victims of whom it was said that their “dreams” had been cut off. This is a typical expression of decadent liberalism, which cannot relate to any objective good, but only approves of subjective desires. So, if a person has been murdered, the good that has been criminally taken away from him is not his life, not his life, but his “dreams.” And in a society that treats “dreams” as the highest good, it inevitably comes about that the purpose of government is to help people realize their “dreams,” especially if the people in question are nonwhite, or, even better, if they are nonwhite illegal aliens, as in the “the DREAM Act,” of which Wikipedia tells us:

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (also called “The DREAM Act”) was a piece of proposed federal legislation in the United States that would provide certain immigrant students who graduate from an American High School, are of good moral character, arrived in the US as children, and have been in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill’s enactment, the opportunity to earn conditional permanent residency.

As for the pro-open-borders, Cuban immigrant Martinez, I heard him address the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in New York City in 2001, and wrote about it for NewsMax:

Not only did Martinez offer no serious antidote to HUD’s mission creep, he contributed to it. Pointing out that blacks and Hispanics “lag” behind in home ownership, he recommended Bush’s “American Dream Down Payment Plan,” which will help minorities make their first payment on a home. “We must ensure that all Americans share the American dream,” he repeatedly told the ALEC conference.

But what “sharing the American Dream” means in this context is that the government must make all racial groups equal in home ownership.

Furthermore, since blacks and Hispanics are behind not just in home ownership but in every other socioeconomic indicator as well, the idea that all Americans must “share the American Dream” would ultimately require state-guaranteed equality of results for all ethnic and racial groups in every area of life.

Now that is mission creep.

(“Big-Government Conservatism Comes to ALEC”, Lawrence Auster, Newsmax, Aug. 6, 2001.)

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Mark A. writes:

Right! What a fool Gramm was. If you want more idiocy, please read about how Gramm helped repeal FDR’s Glass-Steagall Act back in 1999.

I think what you said to Geert Wilders (I saw your comment on youtube) is applicable here: we cannot discriminate anywhere including housing. Therefore, the question is not whether the buyer should be in the house; the question is just how we finance the sale.

LA replies:

Well put. That really captures it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 28, 2009 07:53 PM | Send