Business

As cause of woe$, Monica takes the cigar

It’s all Monica Lewinsky’s fault.

The former White House intern, a special friend of President Bill Clinton (who was curiously named “Father of the Year” last week by one publicity-seeking, morally tone-deaf organization), was the cause of our financial problems over the past six years.

OK, give me your full attention before you declare me legally insane, because I am half serious about this. You already know the oral history of the case. Lewinsky, then an eager 22-year-old graduate of Lewis & Clark College, got a little confused one day while at the White House. So instead of serving her country above and beyond the call of duty, she serviced Clinton above and below.

And she blew it for all of us.

The facts of the Lewinsky matter started coming out in 1998, and the affair eventually resulted in the impeachment of Clinton in 1999. He whined, he apologized to Hillary, and he maneuvered. And in the end the Senate gave Clinton a pass and let him serve out his term in office.

Clinton eventually made money writing books and doing whatever it is that ex-presidents do. And now Lewinsky is even said to be offering her story to the highest bidder since, I guess, interns-who-serviced-presidents-in-that-way aren’t on much of a career path.

The rest of us wish we had done as well as those two.

Anyone who was a grown-up back in 1998 — and I reluctantly count myself among them — remembers just how disruptive the impeachment was. And those of us who write about financial markets also understood back then the unique danger that came with the first president in 130 years potentially being thrown out of office.

The folks in Washington, in particular, knew the possible problems. The last thing this country needed in the midst of this political confusion was financial chaos. So it’s no wonder that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan — who was also handling the collapse of hedge fund Long Term Capital Management and the effects of financial problems in Russia — kept interest rates exceptionally low throughout the impeachment year and beyond.

The stock market thrived (for a while). The Internet bubble helped some people make lots of money, although others eventually lost fortunes. And — most important to the Lewinsky-is-to-blame thesis that I’m presenting here for the first time — the housing market roared thanks to the generosity of the Fed, which was like the person who put the teakettle on the stove and walked away for too long.

When Osama bin Laden struck in 2001, interest rates were already low because of the impeachment. But the Fed needed to push them down even more to contain any possible financial panic and keep the US economy going despite such a major disruption to the economy.

And the low interest rates worked. Among other things, people bought houses. Low borrowing costs, bank deregulation and creative mortgage financing that began during the Clinton years allowed many people to purchase homes who really couldn’t afford them.

Widespread homeownership was something that Clinton had preached during his first term. But it was his dalliance with Lewinsky that helped keep mortgage rates exceptionally low and made the cause of universal homeownership a neat diversion for the politicians.

By 2005, owners occupied 68.8 percent of all homes, up from 65.8 percent in the pre-Lewinsky year of 1997. There were a lot of defaults in that extra 3 percentage points.

The Republicans, of course, didn’t do anything to avert the housing crisis that was about to happen. President George W. Bush was also more than happy to have borrowing costs very low and homeownership rising during his term. A financially contented electorate looks the other way when presidents spend money to fight wars in places most people couldn’t find on a map.

It’s common knowledge now that the housing market’s collapse led to our problems today. And housing wouldn’t have become so sucky if it hadn’t gotten overblown thanks to Lewinsky. (OK, I promise that’s the final only slightly veiled reference to . . . um . . . you know . . . for today.)

In truth, Clinton was as much to blame as Lewinsky. It does take two to tango and to do the other stuff I’ve mentioned here.

But if I had started this column with Clinton’s name, you would have thought this was just another column about politics, and not about sex — and you wouldn’t have read it. Excuse me for pulling this writer’s trick on you.

What’s the moral of my story? Well, I guess it’s the same one your mother told you when you were growing up: There can be serious consequences when you have sex.

And most of the things that can go wrong will cause you pain and cost you money.

*

I’ve put this off long enough. I want to give my opinion about the so-called “trillion-dollar coin” option for circumventing the nation’s debt ceiling

The “idea” of this coin — if you even want to elevate this ridiculous notion by calling it an “idea” — is profoundly stupid, amazingly asinine and simply ludicrous, as well as powerfully dangerous. Most astounding is that the trillion-dollar coin notion is actually being discussed by the rational wing of the media with a straight face when stuff like this should be dealt with at 2 a.m. on cable stations that sell spray-on hair.

I hope I wasn’t too vague about my view of this matter.

john.crudele@nypost.com