i blame deregulation too, and i look forward to seeing more regulation of the US financial market, hopefully expanding in the futures trading market as well...this crash has created a groundswell of bipartisan support for financial regulation

regulation *might* have prevented this crisis, but deregulation alone did not cause it...nobody put a gun to the bank managers heads and told them to issue risky loans...nobody forced them to package risky loans together and sell them to other banks and investment houses...subprime loans existed before the 1999 financial services act, otherwise known as the gramm-leach-bliley act (all three are republicans and john mccain supported the legislation)......government deregulation failed to protect the public interest, but banks and investment houses were still legally obligated to be prudent with other people's money and they failed spectacularly...we will see a lot more corporate heads on sticks than politicians heads


many liberals claim that gun control regulation like assault weapons bans will reduce murders and gun crime...many conservatives dispute that...a guy who plans to kill someone is probably going to do it anyway, even if he has to wait one week to pick up his new semi-automatic machine gun

imagine this crazy scenario:
bill clinton signs a republican bill to deregulate assault weapons in his second last year of office...in 2002, george bush issues a policy statement promoting assault weapon ownership to 5.5 million low income and minority people...george bush sends his appointee running the alcohol tobacco and firearms department to pressure gun stores regulated by the ATF to lower their standards and extend credit to risky customers to match the assault weapons sales in non-regulated gun stores...after the inevitable wave of assault weapon crime terrorizing american urban centers, post offices, and schools, george bush makes a speech to the nation suggesting that the cause of the crime wave started before he took office, and fox news supports his story with misleading journalism blaming bill clinton and the democrats for the crime wave

that is what happened here...george bush directly encouraged banks to engage in risky loan practices in 2002...he campaigned in 2004 on home ownership rates...he sent his appointee in charge of the housing and urban development department to pressure fannie and freddie (which are regulated by the HUD) to issue more subprime loans in 2005...the crap hits the fan and he pretends the problem has to do with foreign investors and something that happened over a decade ago

i'm not saying the dems are innocent (not by a long shot) but i don't accept that george bush or allan greenspan are minority players who tried to stop this...the bush administration and the financial industry promoted risky subprime loans for years leading up to the subprime crisis


"First, how did our economy reach this point? Well, most economists agree that the problems we are witnessing today developed over a long period of time. For more than a decade, a massive amount of money flowed into the United States from investors abroad, because our country is an attractive and secure place to do business. This large influx of money to U.S. banks and financial institutions -- along with low interest rates -- made it easier for Americans to get credit."
- George W Bush, putting the cart before the horse, Sept/08