HEADS, I WIN; TAILS, YOU LOSE

"For years, using the powers of the Community Reinvestment Act and other regulatory powers, along with threats of legal action if the loan approval rates varied from the population profile, politicians have pressured banks and other lending institutions into lending to people they would not lend to otherwise. Yet, when all this blows up in our faces and the economy turns down, what is the answer? To have more economic decisions made by politicians, because they choose to say that 'deregulation' is the cause of our problems. Regardless of how much suffocating regulation may have been responsible for an economic debacle, politicians have learned that they can get away with it if they call it 'deregulation.' No matter what happens, for politicians it is 'heads I win and tails you lose.' If we keep listening to the politicians and their media allies, we are all going to keep losing, big time."

-- Thomas Sowell