What Obama Should Do

By Conrad Black and appearing on National Review:

The first thing we need to do, as we reassess the crisis, is realize the extent to which the country was horribly and unimaginably failed by its entire public- and private-sector leadership. The Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, and their Congresses, discouraged savings; legislated non-commercial mortgages in the private sector (a political free ride, as both parties boasted of increasing home ownership at no cost to the taxpayers); raised the ceiling on investment-bank debt leverage on unsecured assets to 30 to one; and acquiesced while consumers piled up debt that enriched Chinese exporters of cheap goods, European and Japanese exporters of luxury goods, and the oil-exporting cartel, including Venezuela and (indirectly) Iran.