I was talking to a McCain supporting friend of mine about the economic meltdown and he came out with the argument that the crisis was precipitated by the Carter era "Community Reinvestment Act". This bill was sort of an Affirmative Action for lenders. It required banks to collect racial data with their loan applications to insure that a certain percentage of loans went to minorities regardless of the risk. The argument goes that by forcing banks to make bad loans, it caused the meltdown we are now experiencing. He pulled out Stan Liebowitz as a proponent of this argument.
Stan Liebowitz wrote an article back in February that used Clinton's expansion of that bill to hang the current debacle around the necks of "progressives". In the article he accuses organizations like ACCORN of promoting risky lending policies in the name of economic equality. He claims it's these misguided "progressive" do gooders that set the market up for failure by forcing banks to abandon sound lending practices.
It seems to me that the percentage of loans guaranteed to low income families alone would not amount to much of a crisis if they all defaulted. But the argument is that it was this act that allowed greed to pray on the sub prime markets.
It's a meme that plays well into the hands of McCain's base. Uprooting it would be helpful.