No, it was the government. The greedy bastards on Wall Street simply took advantage. The government passed legislation in the 1970s and updated that legislation in the 1990s, legislation that pushed banks to give home loans to people who would never have qualified for them (and who should never have qualified for them); consequently you had people making $20,000 a year getting loans for $100,000 homes. Then, of course, there is this idiotic notion that home values must forever increase in value. It was the government that allowed mortgages to be packaged into securities and sold to investors.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Logically? All you got is the same people who only yesterday were telling you everything is fine and the fundamentals of the economy were strong and are now claiming we're in a crisis.

Logically you got nothing...this is pure fear mongering...

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I'm Proud I never Voted For Bush!



PAT PAULSEN FOR PRESIDENT

Absolutely. The industry lobbied for it, the government acquiesced to their demands. After all, how dare the government tell corporations what to do?

The government elected not to understand how bubbles and boom/bust economies must work: they invariably fail. The government has continually elected to put narrow business interests first: "What's good for Wall Street is good for Main Street".

Everyone seems rather shocked that just ain't so.

We need responsible adults put back into charge of government, not overprivileged frat boys, happy to enable corporate malfeasance.

In my opinion, Wall Street needs some serious leashing. Too bad we'll all conveniently forget about this in a few years, and go right back to our lunatic ways.

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An employee gets trampled to death by a frenzied, greedy mob at a Walmart sale, and customers actually complained when the store closed. Yet, I'm the bad guy for suggesting policies that assume people act like retarded herd animals that need government nannying and control....