Those responsible...

From a Mish post...

Before I continue let me provide a partial list of entities responsible for the financial mess we find ourselves in:

-Fractional-reserve banking, which is inherently unstable and entirely a confidence game
-Congress for passing the Federal Reserve Act and creating the Federal Reserve, the third central bank in the history of the US
-Woodrow Wilson for using the Fed to finance World War 1
-Benjamin Strong, the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 1914-1928, for inflating the money supply in the '20s to help out Great Britain which led to the Great Depression
-Herbert Hoover for his economic intervention from 1929-1932. He was not laissez-faire by any means.
-John Maynard Keynes for laying the foundation of a miseducated public
-FDR for banning private ownership of gold, enacting the New Deal, creating Social Security and Fannie Mae, and exacerbating the Great Depression
-The FDIC for lulling the American public into a false sense of security regarding their bank deposits and training the public to unquestionably trust the financial system
-LBJ for the guns and butter of the '60s
-Nixon for severing all ties between the US dollar and gold
-Reagan's intellectual duplicity, using free market, small government rhetoric while turning the US into a chronic debtor nation
-Alan Greenspan, one of the most duplicitous, arrogant, and incompetent individuals in the history of the United States. If I had to pin this crisis on any one man, it would be he.
-George W. Bush for cutting taxes while raising spending and his full embrace of Cheney's doctrine of "deficits don't matter"
-Ben Bernanke for following the Greenspan doctrine to its inevitable conclusion
-The heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for using artificially low borrowing costs to create systemically-dangerous housing institutions
-Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank for beating the socialist drum
-Christopher Cox for thinking a ban on short-selling will solve anything
-Hank Paulson for folding the hand he was dealt
-The ratings agencies for rubber stamping garbage assets as AAA
-The heads of the major banks and brokerages on Wall Street for turning a blind eye as their institutions were taking on massive leverage that threatens to take down the financial system
-The hedge funds that levered up structured finance to dangerous levels
-Generations of lawmakers for kicking the looming financial crisis can down the road
-Home buyers who lied about their income and creditworthiness
-Predatory lenders who put people into mortgages they could never afford