Are There ANY Lies John Boehner WON'T Tell?

My God, this lying clown repeats just about EVERY single right-wing lie imaginable about the economic meltdown. What a mendacious, viciously dishonest so-called "leader". Media Matters is on the case:

CLAIM: Speaker Boehner Claimed That "Government Mortgage Companies...Triggered The Whole Meltdown" In Our Economy


BOEHNER: And the government mortgage companies that triggered the whole meltdown went untouched.


FACT: Lax Oversight And Potentially Fraudulent Financial Practices Caused The Housing Bubble And Ensuing Meltdown


The Collapse Of The Housing Bubble Triggered A Banking Crisis That Lead To A Massive Recession. From Slate: "The only near consensus is on the question of what triggered the not-quite-a-depression. In 2007, the housing bubble burst, leading to a high rate of defaults on subprime mortgages. Exposure to bad mortgages doomed Bear Stearns in March 2008, then led to a banking crisis that fall. A global recession became inevitable once the government decided not to rescue Lehman Bros. from default in September 2008. Lehman's was the biggest bankruptcy in history, and it led promptly to a powerful economic contraction. Somewhere around here, agreement ends." [Slate, 1/9/10]


Subprime Mortgage Data Do Not Support Claim That Government Actions Triggered Housing Bubble. Barry Ritholtz, who wrote the book Bailout Nation about the housing bubble and ensuing financial crisis, reports:


Federal Reserve Board data show that:


-More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.


-Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.


-Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics. [The Big Picture, 12/16/10]


Complex Accounting Tricks By Wall Street Firms Contributed To The Magnitude Of The Recession. From Slate: "A bit farther down on the list are various contributing factors, which didn't fundamentally cause the crisis but either enabled it or made it worse than it otherwise might have been. These include: global savings imbalances, which put upward pressure on U.S. asset prices and downward pressure on interest rates during the bubble years; conflicts of interest and massive misjudgments on the part of credit rating agencies Moody's and Standard and Poor's about the risks of mortgage-backed securities; the lack of transparency about the risks borne by banks, which used off-balance-sheet entities known as SIVs to hide what they were doing; excessive reliance on mathematical models like the VAR and the dread Gaussian copula function, which led to the underpricing of unpredictable forms of risk; a flawed model of executive compensation and implicit too-big-to-fail guarantees that encouraged traders and executives at financial firms to take on excessive risk; and the non-confidence-inspiring quality of former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's initial responses to the crisis." [Slate, 1/9/10, emphasis added]

There's more, much more. This is the person we need to throw OUT of the Speaker's chair next year. I'm ready to help. How about you?