The problem here is you dont need to make predatory loans to get the financial crisis. A lot of people took mortgages full well knowing what they were getting into. It wasnt as much that people were getting fooled but rather there was a pile of money up for grabs and nobody paid much thought about the consequences while they were grabbing it.
And Spitzer has been known to spin things in a way favorable to his own best interest. That doesnt mean he's fully wrong. But it's almost certainly a incomplete picture. Further, he was still governor of New York at this point so a lot of this is politcal posturing. So, I dont dont put a whole lot of stock into his oped etc.
Look, aside from the conservatives who want to protect Bush at all costs, can you guys at least admit this part is true:
In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government's actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.
and this:
Many events in Washington, on Wall Street and elsewhere around the country have led to what has been called the most serious financial crisis since the 1930s. But decisions made at a brief meeting on April 28, 2004, explain why the problems could spin out of control. The agency’s failure to follow through on those decisions also explains why Washington regulators did not see what was coming.
On that bright spring afternoon, the five members of the Securities and Exchange Commission met in a basement hearing room to consider an urgent plea by the big investment banks.
They wanted an exemption for their brokerage units from an old regulation that limited the amount of debt they could take on. The exemption would unshackle billions of dollars held in reserve as a cushion against losses on their investments. Those funds could then flow up to the parent company, enabling it to invest in the fast-growing but opaque world of mortgage-backed securities; credit derivatives, a form of insurance for bond holders; and other exotic instruments.