Wall Street meldown was caused by Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin by engineering removal of Glass-Steagall act. Removing that act enabled banks to use depositor’s money for risky derivatives and other leveraged schemes.
The resulting mess reached breaking point near the end of GWB’s 2nd term, although he had nothing to do with it. Unfortunately GWB did not have enough sense to re-institute Glass-Steagall when republicans had the majority in congress.
Even before that. Shortly after he was elected, Clinton instructed Janet Reno to threaten lending institutions to relax standards for buying homes leading to the sub-prime mortgages. That was the start. And if we want to be really technical, we can go back to Jimmy Carter whose admin passed the Community Reinvestment Act that precipitated the whole thing. Reagan and GHW Bush were sane enough to ignore the act. Clinton couldn’t wait to start it up again.