What caused the eonomic meltdown?

What do you consider to be the MAIN driving force behind the 2008 economic meltdown?

 

Several "eonomic" factors.

 

The poll gives no possible way an honest and knowledgeable person person can answer. Bush is responsible in that he did not work hard enough to mitigate the the Clinton era policies that inflated the housing bubble. Those policies had wide bipartisan support, so blaming them on Democrats is as stupid as blaming the lack of regulation when the financial sector is so tightly regulated that it is impossible to fart without requesting permission three weeks in advance. The excessive regulation prohibited people from responding to the market risk when government backed junk bonds were rated higher than they should have been. On top of that there were other factors, like the fact that the government stepped in and bailed out the people who made the mistakes. That one is squarely on Bush by the way.

 

QW -

I agree that all of the factors listed share some responsibility, but it is so clearly established that the lack of regulation over 30 years sparked the rush of greed and fraud that I don't know why anyone would suggest otherwise.

Bush was on watch at the time, and holds massive responsibility for ignoring the warnings that were being made by experts. Martin Wolffe in the Financial Times outlined the crisis in great detail three months before it happened - Bush ignored that information.

 

It's a combination of things.

A huge combination

But I'd say the main contributor was clinton forcing banks to loan money to people they would Never consider before so they could buy houses, or allow people into bigger homes than they could afford.

That forced banks to shuffle money around in phoney ways.

Anyone that says it's just Bushs fault is lying and/or running for President.

 

How did Clinton "force" banks to loan money?

 

The ignorant foreigner wants a simple answer.

 

What a complete load of racist bullshit.

Clinton required banks to make loans to QUALIFIED minorities that banks would never consider not because thy were not qualified, but because they were minorities. To a racist no minority is ever qualified for a loan. Making loans to the unqualified did not happen until Bush's Dec 2003 ADDI. Starting in 2004 everything went to hell.

Banks shuffled money around in phony ways out of pure greed and nothing else.

 

Why do you care? Are you vested in the American economy?

 

Saigon wrote: What do you consider to be the MAIN driving force behind the 2008 economic meltdown?

The real estate industry, Wall St. bankers, and our incompetent politicians...

... the real estate industry for colluding with mortgage companies to come up with the subprime mortgage scheme...

... Wall St. bankers for bundling mortgages and selling them as an investment while creating a counter-market of credit default swaps/derivatives...

... and our incompetent politicians on both sides of the aisle for being asleep at the wheel and failing to regulate either industry.