You've got it backwards.
The government didn't force the banks to do this.
The banks wanted to do this and saw to it that people were elected who would do their bidding, like Clinton and Bush.
The banks didn't care whether the loans got paid back because they sold them to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who them bundled these financial time-bombs together with good loans into mortgage-backed securities and spread the risk out among the entire US population.
The knew all along that the government would ultimately bail them out because they'd already seen to it, way back in 2001, that their man was in office.
If you want more details about what Bush did during his first term to cause this, see my FR homepage.
Correct and the scam has made a hell of a lot of bankers very, very rich.
Nice try! Just like with Amnesty and it's obvious ill effect, I don't think Bush had a clue this could happen.
Bush is a moderate namby, but there's no way he was trying to bankrupt the economy. He just had the same idiotic mindset as the foolish dems.