kEiThZ
Superstar
So it comes down to right leaning political policies of deregulating industries that cannot control themselves. Harper & Tories believe in deregulation. It's strange that people elect leaders to run their government who outright tell them they do not like government. The bad results of this kind of voting can be seen in the last 8 years of incompetence in the US.
I don't think it was any ideologically driven policy that brought about the current crisis, in so much as a lack of policy and the timing of events. It's simplistic to say that the Republicans or Democrats were responsible for this. Even now, for example, politicians on both sides of the aisle need tax breaks to pass the bailout package. That's bad policy. I think the crisis is a result of an inflow of the extraordinarily high savings from overseas (particuarly Asia). Capital has to go somewhere. Add that, to Greenspan's attempt to avoid deflation (a genuine concern during the end of the Clinton era) and you have the ingredients for today's crisis. Even saying it was deregulation is difficutlt. It wasn't so much as deregulation as a lack of rules on how to handle new products like mortgage backed securities. With all the capital flying around, it would have happened anyway. In the long run, what's needed is policies encouraging Americans to increase their savings rate and an end to tax write-offs for mortgages. Simplistic attempts to blame one or the other political party is hardly going to prevent another crisis in the future.