You can blame Acorn (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), or Carter for CRA (Community Reinvestment Act of 1977), or Clinton for initiatives that “pushed” for mortgages or assistance to low-income borrowers, but there is plenty of blame to go around. Bush has been in office 8 years & the Republicans were in control of both houses for 6 years! I think it will be crucial to find out exactly how much responsibility will be attributed to the lenders themselves. Did they push the envelope too far? How reckless were they? How much did their greed influence their lending practices? We just don’t know now, but time should tell. I don’t think the FBI is investigating these companies for the fun of it though (FBI investigating companies at heart of meltdown – http://www.newsweek.com/id/160555). Hopefully in the near future we’ll have a clearer picture of exactly how this happened & what we can do to avoid it from ever happening again. I think the crucial point to realize about this whole mess is… Why now? What has changed to contribute to everything falling apart in such a compacted time frame? Well, the dramatic rise over the last 8 years in fuel/energy costs, food, health care, the loss of jobs & stagnant wages have made it next to impossible for people to make their loan payments. The borrowers did not simply say “I don’t want to pay, so I’ll just default & lose my house.” People desperately want to stay in their homes. They just can’t afford them anymore. Bush’s economic policies in every criteria have been a complete disaster. McCain’s economic plan is a carbon copy of Bush’s. I think we can agree for sure on one thing though… We are in DEEP!