FDR. He convinced Americans that there IS such a thing as a free ride.
Do you blame those who did not believe in a Market economy or those who did, but sold out? Nixon closed the Gold Window, instituted wage and price controls. He knew better.
Bush knew better. Most of Wall Street knew better. Yet they succumbed. Why?
Democrats aka Socialists never believed, they see all wealth creation as theft. Are they at fault or those of us who knew better but looked the other way? Remember when Blue Chip and bond clippers were real words? People and stockholders stayed with a company out of loyalty and were rewarded for it. Slowly things changed, borrowing and lending became a science (derivatives), risk became an illusion. Loyalty to company, to employee, to stock, to return, ended. “Growth” became king. Savings and Loans, dotcoms, Bobby Baker, Bearn Sterns Aig, Enron, No particular order, same result. People saw risk as something that could be assumed away. No risk, no real market, a socialists dream. Well we have backed onto a cliff with no way safely down. A market solution is viewed by all as too extreme. We need to help the market by lowering risk again. By risk we hope to return to what was before. Wait what was before? Ah yes we eliminated risk. WE will the go forward. To what? The insane now run the sanitarium.
Both of them. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, our most overrated president. And Franklin Delano Raines, who enriched himself looting Fannie Mae, which in turn was backstopping the creation and proliferation of garbage housing credit, leading to the mess we are currently in.