Bush wades into Fannie, Freddie debate

President George W. Bush, on a book tour to promote his memoirs, is rejecting the argument that the financial crisis that erupted during the final year of his presidency stemmed from a “lack of regulation.” But he isn’t shy about faulting government policy—and mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—for inflating the housing bubble. President Bush told WSJ columnist Kimberley Strassel that this wasn’t “a lack-of-regulation crisis, except for the extent to which Fannie and Freddie were allowed to run wild. . . . This was a regulated house of cards—regulators were watching it all. . . . This was a crisis that was caused in large part by bad business decisions.”