Government as a Cause of Subprime Follies

Thomas Sowell has written a column, Sub-Prime Politicians, that describes the mutliple ways that bad government policies are causes of the subprime mortgage mess. Government restrictions on building in certain times and places have been shown to be a major factor, as has the more obvious and direct government interference of pressuring lenders to give loans to people with risky credit to encourage more home ownership. He concludes his column as follows:

Yet with all the finger-pointing in the media and in government, seldom is a finger pointed at the politicians at local, state and national levels who have played a key role in setting up the conditions that led to financial disasters for individual home buyers and for those who lent to them.

While financial markets are painfully adjusting and both lenders and borrowers are becoming less likely to take on so much risky "creative" financing in the future, politicians show no sign of changing.

Why should they, when they have largely escaped blame for the disasters that their policies fostered?