Rep. Artur Davis, Democrat-Birmingham, Alabama, who was in the video from 2004 of Democrats fighting Republican efforts to fix Fannie Mae issued a statement of apology today admitting, "We Were Wrong!" Davis wasn't as vocal or obnoxious as Rep. Maxine Waters.
“Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues, I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable homeownership, when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit that when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong. By the way, I wish my Republican colleagues would admit that they missed the early warning signs that Wall Street deregulation was overheating the securities market and promoting dangerously lax lending practices. When it comes to the debacle in our capital markets, there is much blame to go around for both sides.”
In the video, Davis said, "The concern that I have is you're making very specific, what you have correctly acknowledged, broad and categorical judgments about the management of this institution, about the willfulness of practices that may or may not be in controversy. You've imputed various motives to the people running the organization. You went to the board and put a 48-hour ultimatum on them without having any specific regulatory authority to put that kind of ultimatum on 'em. Uh, that sounds like some kind of an invisible line has been crossed."
Thus far, Davis is the only Democrat who accepted responsibility in this mess. Kudos to him. I disagree that Republicans missed the warning signs and deregulation had nothing to do with the debacle. He also voted yesterday for the bailout bill.
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