The article is written as though it's journalism, but it does have a pretty clear political agenda. For instance, "President Clinton's tenure was characterized

The article is written as though it's journalism, but it does have a pretty clear political agenda. For instance, "President Clinton's tenure was characterized by economic prosperity and financial deregulation, which in many ways set the stage for the excesses of recent years." The author is making the claim there that the deregulation set the stage for financial excesses. More on that in a minute. About Fannie Mae: "President Lyndon Johnson, who in 1968 pushed it halfway out the government nest and into a problematic part-private, part-public role in an attempt to reduce the national debt" The article implies that the whole mess was a result of deregulation and more controls/regulation would have fixed it. Where in reality, it's really complicated, and there was some terrible abuses by officers of public corporations, and terrible judgment of government. The article implies American financial excess culture was created by deregulation - whereas a lot of people would contend that having the government slash interest rates to almost free money status was a large contributor to people spending out of control, borrowing so much, leveraging so much, speculating so much. And that's a government problem, not a private industry problem. Fannie/Freddie - author implies the problem was the semi-private nature of the business. Whereas the semi-government nature of the business allowed them to take risks that private industry might not have. Clearly there's lots of people responsible for the mess, and most people in the article do deserve some scrutiny. But saying - "Clinton: Deregulated. Bush: Deregulated. Greenspan: Deregulated. Fannie Mae CEO: Deregulated back in 1968..." whereas there wasn't any citing of ridiculously low interests rates, government backing of bad mortgages, and so on - well, it's an opinion, but it's certainly not objective journalism. Edit: Actually, it does mention interest rates on Greenspan. It's just it mentions deregulation 3-4 times, mentions libertarianism and even Ayn Rand once each, and mentions "super low interest" rates only in passing, then concludes with: "The maestro admitted in an October congressional hearing that he had "made a mistake in presuming" that financial firms could regulate themselves.