Yes, the "housing crisis" was part, but only part, of the collapse... But it wasn't the major factor... The lenders were... They put together junk product which were going to blow up and blow up they did... And guess who was out there as the #1 salesman for the "ownership society"??? That's right... George W. Bush was... He and his Wall Street croonies played the biggest ballgame on America that has ever been seen...
But why did they do it??? To cover the fact that they had irresponsibly cut taxes yet again... Alan Greenspan's initial reaction to the tax cuts were "No way, bad policy" and then Bush and the Boys called him into the White House and roughed him up and he reluctantly went along with them but...
...Greenspan knew what was going to follow... He had seen it before in the 80s and the housing crisis and of '89-'90...
So Bush and his Wll Stret boyz concocted this "ownersh8ip society" and pushed and pushed people to buy homes... Where was the $$$ coming from??? Well, China... So the entire economic growth of the Bush administration wasn't really growth at all... It was a ballgame and artificial growth... Not real growth where you go out and compete with the world... All we did was build houses for *US* without any concern about sound economic principles...
This was the country that Obama inherited... A near collapse from a decade of a very bad Bush?Wall St. ballgame...