This crime was perpetrated by Wall Street, enabled by payola--sorry, political contributions--and favors lavished on Capital Hill and in the White House. Blame extends to all members of both political parties in Congress.
Regulators at the Fed and at Treasury acted as Wall Street Mafia Lieutenants, turning a conveniently blind regulatory eye to the building credit tsunami as they rotated in and out of "public service," offering their expertise in new-style Wall Street markets and financial instruments that mere career civil servants, we were told, who were too stupid to understand.
This criminal enterprise extended its tentacles from Wall Street to Main Street using mortgage brokers and real estate appraisers as pimps and bag men, playing not only on the ignorance but also the unrealistic hopes and aspirations of the credit junkies they'd hooked.
Even if the average citizen didn't get a shady mortgage himself, most of us participated in the fraud by riding the rocket of ever increasing--and increasingly unrealistic--returns through our desperate attempts to insure our retirement investments against a murky future in the new Ownership Society.
Thank God we didn't let Wall Street get its hands on Social Security; a lot more people are going to need it now.