| Thank you for your thoughtful response to my response :) As for who was responsible - I agree that finger-pointing and conspiracy does not really get us anywhere. In fact conspiracy is the least of my concerns...I am more concerned about the money that is being handed out in plain sight. When it comes down to it, you cannot pin responsibility on any one party, but one thing did happen as a result, and some of this result was intentionally manufactured. That end result is the poor/middle-class getting poorer, and a few (transparently) dishonest people getting richer. But worst of all, a huge blow was taken on the economy that is affecting everybody, including the (honest) wealthy classes. You can trace the beginning of the recession back 15 years or so. The funny thing is that people try to point fingers at Democrats or Republicans exclusively, while both parties have done their fair share of damage. And even US citizens have done a lot of damage, but there is a difference between being reckless and being naive. The former describes the people who leveraged debt, the latter describes your average US home buyer. When it comes down to it, maybe no one was singularly responsible, but that does not really matter. What matters is that wealthy owners of private organizations were given tax-payer money. Executives were given golden parachutes even though their companies were bankrupt - guess who paid for these? Tax payer money was funneled into private companies with the purpose of "saving" them, only to have them trade as junk stock within a few months. Honest people were given mortgages that would soon turn into foreclosures - no one's fault, but I think they should be the people bailed out, not these corporations. |