Originally Posted by kane

I think it took the housing market several years (not decades) to build to the point where it eventually burst. The banks started realizing that they could give out these sub-prime mortgages to anyone who can walk and breathe at the the same time then package them up and sell them off before they ever went bad. A ton of banks got in on it and many of them built entire investment portfolios on these mortgages. After 4-5 years of this kind of craziness the mortgages started going bad and suddenly the house of cards came tumbling down.

Was Bush responsible? Not wholly. The deregulation of the banking industry allowed for the widespread selling of these mortgages and the greed of the mortgage and banking industries drove them to just hand out loans with reckless abandon. You can also add in people buying these houses thinking they are going to make a quick buck off them into that as well. There is plenty of blame to go around, but in the end Bush was leading the show and when the team doesn't play well it is the coach that gets blamed.