The New York Times published a short piece highlighting "6 errors" that led to our current financial mess. While I don't agree that every one of the errors cited had the same sorry impact, it's a pretty good list.

Here's one of the "errors" I think the author exaggerates about:

The government’s continuing failure to do anything large and serious to limit foreclosures is tragic. The broad contours of the foreclosure tsunami were clear more than a year ago — and people like Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Sheila C. Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, were sounding alarms.

Yet the Treasury and Congress fiddled while homes burned. Why? Free-market ideology, denial and an unwillingness to commit taxpayer funds all played roles. Sadly, the problem should now be much smaller than it is.

Ohhhh-kayyyyyy. Frank was one of the clowns who pushed home loans for the financially illiterate, loans that in most cases represented 100 percent of a home's value. You can't keep covering for people's mistakes. Was the government supposed to send $50,000 checks to the Lexus owning guy who took 100 percent financing?