if the Glass Steagall Act hadn't been repealed, this mess wouldn't have happened. The repeal was a necessary but not sufficient condition for the meltdown.
I don't get the necessary but not sufficient comment. Please explain.
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act allowed Commercail Banks, investment banks, security firms and insurance companies to consolodate, i.e. to become "to big to fail" and repealed Glass-Steagall's conflicts of interest provisions.
Seems to me the G-L-B Act, along with greed and a complete disregard for our country's economic health is one cause of our economic problems. Failure to regulate and enforce existing laws, cutting taxes and engaging in war, are a couple of others. There is no single cause, no single party or person to blame.
Conveniently, you left out Gov't spending. That's the straw that broke the camels back.
Also conveniently, you throw out the GLB, along with "greed" and other bull shit, that doesn't add up to a hill of beans! In the end, nobody forced the dumbass' to purchase mortgages that they could not afford. I mean come on! It's common sense! Don't sign the dotted line on something that certainly WILL come back and bite you in the ass! Nothing IS FREE!
The bottom line is that DEBT got us into this shit! Debt! Debt that nobody can afford. Spending by the Federal, State, local AND Personal got us into this mess, and it is what will keep us from recovering from it. I don't care how many regulations that are placed on the books, they will never be able to make up for the lack of finacial discipline required to keep a successful economy going.
The bottom line is, you can not afford to spend more than you take in, no matter what!