From the Wall Street Journal reporting about President Bush’s speech ahead of the G-20 meeting.

Mr. Bush also will warn against the danger of overregulation, noting that some European countries oversaw their mortgage markets more extensively than the U.S., yet experienced “problems almost identical to our own.”

This is a, ‘but Johnny did worser’ arguments. Let’s put this into a contrarian phrased example to bring out the center of the argument. Your neighbor lives in a house built to higher code standards than your house. As your house burns down because of shoddy construction and negligence on your part, the flames spread quickly to those of your neighbors. And you stake your defense as being ” their house shouldn’t have caught fire if it were built better.” Sadly, his argument is taking hold, even though those countries that burned with Wall Street were built using the model of Wall Street. Ayn Reagan gets its way.

The real word: beware whose homework you copy