Is Deregulation to Blame? Not According to Bill Clinton

Liberal punditry's favorite hobgoblin in the current financial mess is the 1999 deregulation bill sponsored by McCain's (former) economic advisor, Phil Gramm. The story, oversimplified, is that deregulation and the resulting lack of government oversight made it easier for bad loans to be approved. This thesis has been addressed and critiqued elsewhere on this blog, and to those arguments and references we can add the testimony of none other than the President who signed the 1999 bill into law: Bill Clinton. President Clinton denies that the bill was forced upon him, and right up front denies that it is responsible for the current crisis:

But I have really thought about this a lot. I don't see that signing that bill had anything to do with the current crisis. Indeed, one of the things that has helped stabilize the current situation as much as it has is the purchase of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, which was much smoother than it would have been if I hadn't signed that bill.

One would hope that evidence like this would put a halt to the liberal media's boilerplate, but alas.