thunder wrote:
On Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:21:18 -0800, Calif Bill wrote:


It started a lot further back than Bush, or Clinton, or Bush 1.

Bush Basher that I am, I can't blame this on Bush. I believe the
government gets too much blame, *and* too much credit, for the economy.
The government might have developed the framework that allowed this to
happen, but they didn't cause it to happen. No one put a gun to the head
of Wall Street's Masters of the Universe and forced them to make
incredibly risky decisions. No one told Lehman Brothers they had to
leverage themselves 33 to 1. Greed and stupidity did that. This is a
free market, after all.



If you look backwards to some legislation good old Phil Gramm
promulgated, you'll find some answers. Look up the Gramm-Leach-Bliley
Act. It allowed all sorts of financial mergers, such as the ones between
banks and insurance companies, and, bascially, deregulated the financial
services company.

In other words, it was a license for greed.