While I do not absolve Clinton for everything he did, the 2003 legislation which pretty much deregulated everything was really the fina nail in the coffin, and this was under Bush's watch.

Personally I put a great deal of blame on Alan Greenspan. Basically he went along with the false assumption that we could continue to print money, lower interest rates, and give credit to anyone who asked for it. THAT was the fake prosperity of the Clinton and Bush years. I know many people who would max out their credit cards, buy new luxury cars, refinance their house, and then do the same thing over and over. These same people are now bitching that they should be bailed out. As along as people are borrowing money and spending it freely on everything, the economy appears to be far stronger than it is. In the mean time these geniuses on Wall Street were chopping up these bad loans and pawning them off on people betting they would get a return on these "secured" investments, assuming the value of real estate would always be rising. The geniuses, of course then paid themselve huge bonuses, and held all the realy bad paper, overvaluing it enormously.

IMHO Greenspan saw this coming and bailed his sorry ass out and dumped the mess on Bernake and Poulson (I believe Bush is literally running out the clock and is pretty much disengaged at this point).

I am hoping Obama picks Paul Volker for Sec of Treasury, if only for one year. Volker is 81, so all the administrative
and daily briefings etc should be handled by some under secretary to allow Volker and as many brains as he and Obama want to collect go to work on this mess.