I'm guessing you were sitting on the beach or something when George Bush (early in his first term) told the country that he would use the "might hand of government" to force the hand of banks on their lending, to address "social and racial imbalances". If you had closed your eyes, you would have thought it was Obama. THAT was the quintessential fraud of the Bush administration.

I am not saying that financial institutions are as pure as the driven snow. They're not. What I am saying is that I haven't seen too many outside the United States who really understand cause and effect when it comes to a free or even mixed economy, and what got us into this holy mess.

A litmus test on this issue...if someone understands what primary factors caused the Great Depression.