FT.com / US / Economy & Fed - Fed chief calls for tougher regulation.

Ben Bernanke has called for reform of financial regulation, arguing on Sunday that it was lapses in regulatory oversight rather than loose monetary policy that stoked the US housing bubble.

The Federal Reserve chairman told the American Economic Association that exotic new mortgages and lending to borrowers who could not hope to repay their loans were chief causes of the sharp increase in home prices that ran from the late 1990s until 2006 and whose collapse hurt millions of Americans.

You'd think it a statement of the bleeding obvious.

But apparently not for the American Right. For them markets never get anything wrong and government always gets everything wrong.

It's very hard to take such lack of objectivity seriously.

The Barack and Ben show needs to keep this one on the road.