[Intolerant in NJ]

Mortgage-backed securities were nothing new, and we've always had speculation in the market...but what was new was the conditions under which the MBS's were created - risky loans which the government forced banks and lending institutions to approve and then protected from collapse which otherwise would have happened with taxpayer money - this so dislocated the market and confused speculators - "Wall Street" - who hadn't seen this sort of nonsense before that literally for years they could not and did not expect the market to fail, because they could not believe the initial lenders had acted in such a heedless manner - the real problem on Wall Street was not greed but ignorance about the real nature of what they were dealing with - ignorance which the federal government hatched by interfering with the normal rules of lending and credit so they could provide free houses to voters at taxpayer expense......

[dennisw]

absurd!! Wall Street guys are not innocent children. They make billions off this mess. In fact they instigated it by bribing/lobbying Washington to terminate the Glass-Steagal act and to pass the Commodities Futures Act of 2000

Sure DC hacks are to blame too but they did not become multi-millionaires off the real estate mess