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I'll agree that Greenspan was partially at fault by his policies, but the list of who caused this is long:

Congress for encouraging lenders to lend to people who had no business taking on a mortgage. They neither had enough money down, nor the ability to pay their debts

Lenders for being greedy

Borrowers who had no business doing this

Investment banks who did poor due dilligence

Bond insurers who never understood the risks properly

The commissioners of insurance in New York and Wisconsin (Ambac is domiciled in Wisconsin)

The rating agencies for not understanding the risks.....

All this led to the sub prime collapse. I hope to God we are past the worst, won't comment on Lehman, but stand firmly behind Bernanke. The sub prime mess spilled beyond commercial banks, investment banks and bond insurers. It ran all the way to the municipal markets where there were nearly a trillion dollars of bonds at risk of downgrades. The market needed the stability the Fed provided.

We're not out of the woods, but had they not acted to find a buyer for Bear, to open the discount window to certain investment banks and cut rates, I really wonder where we'd be right now.

....All this led to the sub prime collapse. I hope to God we are past the worst, won't comment on Lehman, but stand firmly behind Bernanke. The sub prime mess spilled beyond commercial banks, investment banks and bond insurers. It ran all the way to the municipal markets where there were nearly a trillion dollars of bonds at risk of downgrades.

Exactly. And ALL those problems still exist. You haven't seen nothing yet in California, for starters. There's untold numbers of people who have still not yet defaulted on their mortgage payments. It'll take several months before that all begins to have additional severe effects on the economy/market. Is it 3 months or so before lenders can go after people for default?

As far as the AMBAC & MBIA ratings...I don't believe their joke ratings (which were bought and paid for) have been re-evaluated to honest ratings (and will not be AAA any longer). So...beyond the ratings currently in place...who will truly put their trust into whatever ratings AMBAC or MBIA places in the future? Had they given accurate and honest ratings....how many of these junk ratings would have been given AAA?

The banks will continue to have announce write-downs. And as, no doubt, many will seek to raise capital by transferring at least some assets into actual values (and we are looking at way less than what they could otherwise get...because credit has now become more restricted, and corporations/people are likely less able and/or willing to spend their monies on properties, etc.), they will continue to be worth less and less and more and more banks/corporations continue to try to dump their assets. (Meredith Whitney also spoke to this problem....they will be competing against each other to get rid of these assets...this will only further reduce what they can sell it for; and to less and less interested and/or qualified buyers.)

All these problems haven't gone away because of the Bear Stearns "deal." And the economy isn't going to "get better" because of Bear Stearns, either. It's way beyond just "BS".

Here's one "for instance" regarding defaults/foreclosures:

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/04/the-advantages.html
Lender-Abandoned, Non-REO Foreclosures
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Consider this troubling question: Do mortgage lenders have any obligation to take over a property that has defaulted on its mortgage?
The short answer, it appears, is no:
I hadn't previously considered this, until a recent article in the Chicago Tribune started me down this path.
Foreclosures and REOs properties are impacting more than the neighborhoods they are in -- they are actually adversely impacting the real estate business -- especially when it comes to foreclosed homes in possession of lenders (REOs).
First, have a look at some recent data regarding REOs:
* * *

"In some cities that have low property values, where there are dense concentrations of foreclosures, you see lenders who file foreclosure proceedings but don't actually take control of the properties, because the lenders have to maintain them and pay taxes on them."
"There are areas in some parts of the country where property values are quite low, and there are no large-scale expectations of them going up. They don't know that they will ever recoup those costs," and so the lenders never re-take title to the properties, allowing them to become derelict."

Municipalities/local governments will be stuck with this mess...either paying the taxes, foregoing the taxes, trying to sell or, perhaps, just bulldozing homes....and IT WILL BE THE LENDERS who, once again, get bailed out, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.

You left out the major culprit...William Jefferson Clinton

Bill Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall,........

“Since repeal of Glass Steagall in 1999, after more than a decade of de facto inroads, super-banks have been able to re-enact the same kinds of structural conflicts of interest that were endemic in the 1920s – lending to speculators, packaging and securitizing credits and then selling them off, wholesale or retail, and extracting fees at every step along the way. And, much of this paper is even more opaque to bank examiners than its counterparts were in the 1920s. Much of it isn’t paper at all, and the whole process is supercharged by computers and automated formulas.”

http://www.progressivehistorians.com/2007/11/bill-clintons-role-in-mortgage-crisis.html