To hear Liberals, you'd think the GOP did away with ALL Regulations while in Power...

[finebead]

Yet I never see ANY Evidence of this Claim...

What Industry is Regulation Free?...

What Industries have had Regulations Removed by the GOP?...

Anyone?...

Now, back to your original question, and I am mainly interested in the mortgage financial crisis.

You asked a good question, but it is only partial. To be complete, if we are talking about regulatory failures by the republicans, the more important question is:

What regulations were needed that the republicans failed to pass from 2001-2006?

Greenspan and the fed had broad power to regulate bank leverage levels, mortgage terms, and yet he failed to step in and issue any new regulations, when clearly the financial system was spinning farther and farther out of control. I think the republican ideology that blindly supports free markets and denounces regulation as unnecessary, directly led to the crisis.

Any ideas what "should have been done", that was not?

Here are some suggestions:

Sheila Bair Chair, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

When [Alan] Greenspan, [Federal Reserve chairman, 1987-2006], left, Congress sort of anointed him "the Oracle" ... Do you remember when he left, that view, and was it ignoring what was to come?

I think there had been a very, very long run of very strong economic growth and prosperity, so I think it was certainly understandable that he would receive a lot of accolades. And I don't think you can take all of that away from him. There's some very good things that had happened during his tenure at the Fed.

But what we know now is that there was too much liquidity. There was too much money chasing too few assets, and so they were looking for leverage to juice up their returns, and that led to a significant deterioration in credit quality standards. I do think there was one thing that the Fed should have done, [which] was acted much earlier. … Congress did not have the momentum to pass lending standards that applied across the board, but the Fed did have the power under HOPA [Homeowners Protection Act] to do that. And that was something that Ned [Gramlich] had really advocated for, and they did not do that. ...

Going back, I think, to 2000, there had been a HUD-Treasury joint study recommending to the Fed that they use their HOPA authority to apply lending standards across the board because of the regulatory arbitrage occurring and the deterioration you could see even back then, outside the banking sector. And, you know, hindsight is always 20/20, but that was clearly one mistake that had been made. ... It could have changed things. I think it could have helped. Whether it could have avoided all of it, I don't know, but it certainly could have helped.

FRONTLINE: inside the meltdown: analysis: greenspan's legacy | PBS

From the same article:

Paul Krugman The New York Times

Boy, has there ever been a greater retrospective downgrading? When he left, a lot of people, including Democratic-leaning economists, were describing him as the greatest central banker in history. And what's clear now -- there were various specific things -- Greenspan failed to see the housing bubble and so on, but most of all, he is on record as having said that we had virtually eliminated systemic risk, that the new parallel banking system, all of these complex financial arrangements had largely eliminated the problems, that basically we've got this finance thing under control. Whatever banking regulations we have actually, we really don't need anymore, because it's all securitized. And -- oh, boy.

He was probably the one person because of his position, who could have led to some prophylactic measures being taken during the bubble years. And instead he was dead set against it. No individual is to blame for this crisis. But if you were going to say who deserves the most disrepute, it would be Greenspan.

So, as I have said, most of the problem with regulation in the financial sector was NOT good regulations that were repealed, MOST of the problem in the mortgage crisis was that new regulations were NEEDED, and the republican congress and white house, and lifelong repub Greenspan, they all failed to pass the regulations that were needed to deal with current events, and that combined with Wall St. greed caused the financial crisis.