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There are four KEY reasons why we are in the boat we are today (according to Mark Levin’s brilliant explanation in his book “Liberty and Tyranny”):

1.) Community Reinvestment Act (CRA)
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This was implemented by a liberal Democrat controlled Congress in conjunction with a liberal Democrat president to ostensibly combat “red lining”, the purported practice of denying people loans on the basis of their race or ethnicity. In 1989, under President GHW Bush and a Democrat Congress, the recording of race data became a requirement on mortgage applications (I think it was the Federal Home Disclosure Act (FHDA ). In 1992, the Boston Federal Reserve did a study and found what they alleged was widespread racism in lending. This study was subsequently debunked by independent researchers who found profound errors such as the inclusion of mortgage rates with negative values that significantly skewed the data. This study was used as is by the Clinton Administration to justify regulations implemented by the Clinton Justice Department in 1995 that applied “grades” to lending institutions that supposedly reflected the “inherent racism” in their lending processes. These regulations also opened up avenues for groups like Neighborhood Association Coalition (NAC), ACORN and the Rainbow Coalition to petition regulators to deny lending institutions the right to acquire other institutions, merge with them, or expand their facilities or branches. Basically, it opened them up to the same kind of extortion that Jesse Jackson’s group has been subjecting corporations to for years, except that in this case, it wasn’t just public opinion they were using to extort, it was the power of the government to restrict business operations.

2.) Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae getting a government mandate to securitize sub-prime mortgages.
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In 1993 (I think) the government mandated that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae had to buy up these sub-prime loans. It did this for two reasons that seem mutually exclusive: to reduce the risk of the loans, and also to make more money available to people for these risky loans. Basically, they were giving loans away to people who had no business to get a mortgage. Many of them had NO lending history or BAD history, had no collateral, were not obliged to make any down payments. These loans amount to over 4.5 TRILLION DOLLARS. This is ALL the doing of liberals and the Democrat party.

3.) The explosion of derivatives in the sub-prime market.
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As this was explained, a derivative is basically someone purchasing the risk on a loan in return for payments of some kind. It is a form of investment which in this type of market was EXTREMELY risky. But with the environment where the people responsible for making money saw this as a viable investment option. (Those of you out there who understand this, please pipe in and explain it, because I think I understand it imperfectly here)

4.) The Federal Reserve’s excessive meddling with the interest rates beginning in 2001.
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The problem here was that the Federal Reserve’s excessive intrusion removed market forces from playing an appropriate role in the regulation of interest rates, and kept them abnormally low when they should not have been.

Of all of these, President Bush has *some* culpability on the Federal Reserve’s meddling. Not all, but there is responsibility there.

With all due respect to Mark Levin, I would include another two factors here:]

5.) Energy Policies.
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Liberal energy policies drove energy prices on commodities such as gasoline to more than $4 a gallon. Many of these people who had no business being a homeowner found themselves in a position where energy prices were driving the cost of everything through the roof, and they couldn’t make ends meet. It is their own responsibility they ended up in that situation, but I firmly believe this was part of the liberal’s goals. After all, Saul Alinsky who is a demi-God to people like Obama and Hillary, makes the case that you have to make people angry and hurt in order to get them on your side. It was the job of liberals to exacerbate the situation and make it as bad as possible. And many so-called “conservatives” played right along with them.

6.) Democrat meddling and cover ups of financial monkey business.
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Liberals inhabit nearly all the top fiscal positions in government, and were the vast majority of the recipients of campaign contributions from troubled institutions. Republicans got money too, but nowhere in the numbers taken in by liberals such as Obama, Dodd and Frank. In addition, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have been like a candy store for people like Franklin Delano Raines and Jamie Gorelick who made tens of millions of dollars cooking the books and falsifying paperwork with offenses such as backdating in order to kick in those bonuses. There is no outrage about this. And even while Republicans were trying to issue tocsin after tocsin, people like Frank, Dodd and others in the Democrat party were assuring everyone there was no problem. I fault Bush and other Republicans for NOT making an even BIGGER deal than they did out of this. The guy who ran the government oversight committee was castigated by Maxine Waters (I think it was her) as a racist for pointing out these issues at a hearing.

So, yes. Bush and Republicans DO have some blame. But this is a DEMOCRAT CAUSED CATASTROPHE. Most Americans simply don’t know this, the media won’t say so, and neither will Republicans.