[Anti-Shiraz]

...policies has caused record mortgage foreclosures? And why did the FED give $38,000,000,000 to mortgage companies instead of homeowners?

[Steve]

I don't blame Bush for the mortgage crisis.

Like all presidents, he has very little control over the economy. The economy is innately cyclical -- the one group that can influence these cycles a bit is the Federal Reserve board. Their lowering of the prime rate was the reason the economy improved by about 2003-2004, and also the reason we're running into the mortgage crisis. Bush's tax cuts had almost exactly zero effect on the economy, as the current situation is demonstrating.

However, what the president does have control over is the budget, so I do blame Bush for nearly doubling the national debt. That is unforgivable.

[Brian]

His policies haven't. Sub-prime lenders pursing mortgage loans and lending to iffy customers caused it.............

[Miss Kitty]

They didn't! The mortgage companies did that themselves!

[Drew Blood SD]

THEY HAVEN'T! It's not the president's responsibility to tell citizens that they're stupid for signing 5-year sub prime mortgages KNOWING FULL WELL that they won't be able to afford their house payment when the new rate kicks in! I have absolutely no sympathy for people who made dumb financial decisions. Blaming the president for people signing bad loans is like blaming the president for all your credit card debt too.

[SirWilliam]

...It hasn't... it's the Sub-Prime lending industry that has extended credit to millions of financial "ner-do-wells" that can't afford to "pay" attention let alone their mortgage....

[ML]

I can't and neither can Greenspan (but he can tell you that the Iraq war is all about oil).

Mr. Greenspan, in an interview to be broadcast Sunday by CBS'"60 Minutes," said he knew about "subprime" lending practices - in which borrowers intially got a much lower payment only to be shocked by dramatically higher payments a few years later - but did not see the dangers."Well, it was nothing to look into particularly because we knew there was a number of such practices going on, but it's very difficult for banking regulators to deal with that," he said.

One of the Fed board's governors, however, in fact raised red flags about the practice but was ignored.

[Rowe for president 2016]

his policies had no effect on the poor decisions of sub prime lenders and borrowers.

i don't think that the fed should give money to either the lenders or the borrowers.

[a1asteve]

This is not President Bush's fault. When President Nixon took us off the gold standard, that started the ability to print money without any kind of true backing.

Now, what President Bush did allow was for the Federal Reserve Bank to stop M3 reporting. This means that the Fed can just print money up without letting Congress have any oversight over how much money is being printed.

The more money that is printed, the less the dollar becomes worth.

This is what causes inflation and this is what has caused this spiral of debt that we are in now.

There is no accountability of our leaders in regards to being accountable to the public anymore.