Reply #23: he's wrong in casting too wide a net; but he's right that blaming JUST the banks is wrong

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congress erred in steadily removed or muted regulation that historically kept lending institutions from doing the wrong thing.

the fed erred in creating a big bubble and permitting over-leveraging.

smaller banks and mortgage originators erred in creating mortages without proper underwriting; in many cases, with outright fraud, knowing the bigger banks or fannie/freddie would take the loans without question.

many borrowers erred in getting themselves in too deep, some knowingly going along with mortgage fraud in order to do so.

and so on.

but note that the blame is reasonably limited to many of those (and certainly not ALL of those) who had a role in the mortgage market. it's really hard to blame "you and me and everybody", even, say, renters who don't work in the industry. what exactly did THEY do wrong?

but i'll agree with what i think was his intended point, which was that the banks are certainly not the ONLY entities who screwed up here.



that said, they don't seem to be falling over themselves to get us out of this mess....