Financial crisis blame was displaced onto homeowners and housing policy

Evidence

Shifting blame was used for exonerative purposes in the collapse of the housing market. Homeowners who had fallen behind on their mortgage payments were blamed for buying homes they should have known they could not afford. In the controversy over who is to blame for the global crisis, the columnist Charles Krauthammer (2008), representing the conservative view, argued that the government’s affordable housing policies, not the banks, had caused the crisis: “What could be a more worthy cause? — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1520

Categorization

• XREF: Links to the book’s ongoing theme of displacement of responsibility and blame-shifting as moral disengagement mechanisms. — connects to: The FCIC’s competing crisis narratives both shielded Wall Street from blame — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 896; Treasury officials blamed the crisis on workers’ unwillingness to save once wages rose — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 885