[coldtea]

>Deregulation was Congressional action, not action of the Federal Reserve (usually referred to by the shortened form, "the Fed").

That's the "law passing" part. But the advisory part has Fed written on it:

"In Congressional testimony on October 23, 2008, Greenspan finally conceded error on regulation. The New York Times wrote, "a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending. ... Mr. Greenspan refused to accept blame for the crisis but acknowledged that his belief in deregulation had been shaken."

"By dialing rates to near zero, Mr. Greenspan made it cheap to lend. It was natural for the banks, a greedy lot to see that they could borrow money at low rates and lend it out to customers at higher rates."

"As a former Federal Reserve official, I was responsible for executing the centerpiece program of the Fed's first plunge into the bond-buying experiment known as quantitative easing. The central bank continues to spin QE as a tool for helping Main Street. But I've come to recognize the program for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time."