Quote - Hint: they weren't "right-wingers".

Quote - People can say what they like about this situation.  Unless if one attempts to totally re-write recent history (which the Dem pols in Congress are now desperately attempting to do) -- the fact remains that the folks who pushed for; threatened lending institutions over; defended against attempted regulatory actions; and received huge political contributions from the whole sub-prime mortgage industry are all sittin' solidly on the left side of the  isle.

As that Saturday Night Live skit so kindly mentions -- it was the hated GWB himself who made an attempt to reign in the abuses going on at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  And furthermore,  as that Youtube video of old C-SPAN footage shows: it was a series of big-name Dems who loudly insisted to everyone that there "weren't any problems here".......while their opponents (including one man named McCain) made dire predictions of a potential economic disaster in the making.

Er, ah, actually, concerning Freddie and Fannie, McCain was mostly concerned about oversight of accounting practices, not lending practices, and is on record for having said he did not expect any problem with the latter.

As for it being the fault of everyone on the so-called left (i.e., Democrats), as I have already admitted, many Democrats have been as corrupted by the system in recent decades as the Republicans. Further, there is video footage of Bush back in about 2005 extolling the virtues of sub-prime loans, talking about how great it is that folks who could otherwise not afford it could now own homes just as nice as anybody's ... oh yeah, and it has been mostly his guys running the show lately ...

As for blaming Reagan, the facts speak for themselves. Supply-side, by-for-and-of-the-corporation-type government has been tried at least 3 times now in this country. Every time it has led to huge abuses, imbalances, and huge economic woes.

Yes, Reaganomics created jobs and it maximized wealth, but for whom?

Asians, and many others, and perhaps even some among the American investment class, might have much to thank Reaganomics for, but the average working and middle-class American -- with a brief Clinton interlude -- has seen their standard of living and quality of life do nothing but decline.

I can say this until I am blue in the face, and I know it will make no impression whatsoever on Xeno, but if just some of all these massive tax cuts for the wealthy had been, instead, invested in improving the infrastructure, and in investing in the future production capacity of this country, more than likely we would be in a different situation.

Quote - Otherwise, we face a future where the government owns and runs everything.

Has it never occurred to the right that some of the reason for FDR's New Deal, whom, and which, many on the right despise, was that the economic system had been thrown thoroughly out of balance by a government geared toward allowing the investment class unbridled license?

If indeed we face a future where the government owns and runs everything, you might just want to consider that old scripture, i.e., that which you sow, ye shall also reap.

Excesses on one side almost always lead to the opposite. The pendulum swings. Any time someone looks for a cause, one can look short-term, or one can look long-term. It's all about context and perspective. So like I said before, there's enough blame to go around ... and, yes, Democrats are to blame too, but it has been the predominance of economic theories that originated on the right that have been running the show for decades now. Face up. The truth can set you free.