the conservatives in the government tried in teh order of 7 or 9 times to tighten controls on the banking sector, each time being quashed by those on the ‘get-everyone-in-a-house’ side. listen to the above testimonies and you will see that red flags were sounded over and over, and each time mr. frank and others on the liberal side insisted that fannie/freddie were just fine, they were strong and solvent. hindsight is 20/20, apparently.

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mr. frank has no credibiility. he is the foremost blame-holder in my book. mr. dodd is the other. both turned a blind eye to the obvious problems, and mr. dodd especially, as this was his committee.

blaming the president – if you know anything about the US government, you will know that the president has NO power in spending money. none. the only thing he can do is sign ‘yes’ or ‘no’. it’s all on the congress to decide where/who/how much. investigate the ‘housing and urban development’ movements in the course of our political system. it started w/ mr. carter, mr. clinton enriched it, as well as mr. g.w. bush. all are cullpable. it was a failed policy to begin with – putting people in homes that couldn’t afford them. the US citizenry as a very general rule are dreamers, ‘me-generational’ (we want what we want when we want it) and consumers vs savers. if someone is standing over the head and saying ‘you can do it!’, they will believe that voice instead of actually doing the hard work of doing the math (which many actually can’t do) to see if they really can afford it. banks have always been in the market to get people into houses up to the extreme that they can afford. its ultimately the RESPONSIBILITY of hte individual to look out for themselves and look out for any eventuality that might occur.

in my opinion, it’s the congress and the individual that hold total blame in this. consider that out housing greed has caused the destruction of the global markets, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to see the world walk away from our ‘gold standard’.