President Bush is warning against stricter financial regulation as a result of the economic crisis. Speaking before the right-wing Manhattan Institute in New York Thursday, Bush said the Wall Street collapse should not be blamed on the radical free market policies he has espoused.

President Bush: “We must recognize that government intervention is not a cure-all. For example, some blame the crisis on insufficient regulation of the American mortgage market. But many European countries had much more extensive regulations and still experienced problems almost identical to our own. History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market; it is too much government involvement in the market.”

Bush made the claim despite overseeing one of the largest government interventions in the financial system in US history.