i understand and accept the moral hazard theory, but i also believe the banks would have gambled with other people's money in the absence of government interference too, and we'd all be paying for it when they crashed the global financial system...they are the primary culprits in this mess

factcheck is an objective source of information, but i find it curious that they didn't mention any of george bush's legislation and policies in the years leading up to the crisis...instead, brooks jackson blamed bill clinton who "pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families."...what about george bush who literally legislated less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for low income homebuyers, and hosted conferences with mortgage giants, pushing them to issue more loans to low income families, and sent his HUD secretary to pressure fannie and freddie to issue $440 billion in mortgages to low income families? george bush had way more responsibility for this than clinton, but dubya only gets blamed for not having enough regulatory oversight, which according to allan greenspan, would not have prevented the subprime crisis anyway


"Investors of all stripes pressed securitizers for more MBS. Securitizers, in turn, pressed lenders for mortgage paper with little concern about its quality. As a consequence underwriting standards collapsed, and mortgage originations and securitizations rose to far greater heights than would have occurred without securitization. Even with full authority to intervene, it is not credible that regulators would have been able to prevent the subprime debacle."
- Allan Greenspan, 2008