Marty Peretz of the New Republic actually thinks that it’s deregulation that caused the current financial crisis, rather than the Federal Reserve suppressing interest rates and the obvious moral hazard of the Fannie/Freddie structure. But then, he also thinks Ronald Reagan deregulated the airlines:
[T]he fault goes back to Bill Clinton who took up the call of deregulation and ran with it. Like with everything he did he did not look back. No, that’s a bit unfair. It goes back to Ronald Reagan who (not single-handedly but with the boy geniuses at his side) destroyed the airline industry in America.
If you happened to read my column last week, then you would know that it was President Carter who signed the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. But, you know, it’s so easy to mistake the executive act of firing air traffic controllers with a legislative act passed by the House and Senate… if you’re a journalist.