Thanks for posting some common sense on this issue.
Subprime mortgages were the root cause, and their creation was indeed encouraged by government, especially liberals.
The market then took these mortgages and played games with them, creating monetary instruments that nobody really understood. In the process they inflated the actual risk by somewhere between one and two orders of magnitude. Unfortunately, we cannot blame this mess entirely or even largely on the government. The primary perps are the people the market rewarded most extravagantly over the last couple decades.
The theory that markets do not do stupid things does not hold up historically. The difference between markets and governments is that markets always self-correct in the long run. Governments can keep tossing money down a hole almost indefinitely, as long as they have a semi-functioning economy to plunder.
As the Soviet Union did. They only collapsed when their economy went from 50% efficient to 25% efficient.
I blame the Feds 30% and that means Franklin Raines, Fanny and Freddy, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank. I also blame GW and his administration for not regulating CMOs and derivatives. Alan Geenspan can be blamed for an insane easy money policy
70% of the blame goes to Wall Street and bankers. They did the most damage with their exotic new derivatives. Some of them should be stripped of their riches and sent to prison