Saturday, February 23, 2013

Top Banker Says Government Caused Housing Crisis
Bribed by federal bailouts and threatened by lawsuits, top bankers have grudgingly gone along with the narrative that greed and deregulation caused the recession.

But one prominent CEO is breaking ranks as he leaves the embattled industry.

While running regional giant BB&T for two decades, John Allison had an insider's view of the factors behind the crisis. A burst of greed wasn't one of them, he says. Nor was deregulation.

"The financial industry was not deregulated, it was misregulated," he asserted.

In his new book, "The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure," Allison says at every step of the way, Washington politicians and regulators brought on the crisis and then made things worse during the panic....