Another Urban Myth

Did deregulation cause the financial mess? "Yes," if you ask most people. "No," if you ask a small group of thoughtful commentators who are willing to look beyond the self-serving political spin of the angry legion that wants to crush the spirit of deregulation, once and for all.

Consider Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe...

"Like the alligators lurking in New York City sewers, Bush's massive regulatory rollback is mostly urban legend. Far from throwing out the rulebook, the administration has expanded it: Since Bush became president, the Federal Register - the government's annual compendium of proposed and finalized regulations - has run to more than 74,000 pages every year but one. During the Clinton years, by contrast, the Federal Register reached that length just once."

Read the rest here.

By the way, 74,000 pages is equivalent to 74 novels the length of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. If you read ten pages every night, it would take you twenty years to read all 74,000 pages -- if nothing changes.