Tim, the mortgage crisis was just as much the fault of the government as the greedy lenders and the people who took loans they couldn't afford. The over-regulation of government clearly pushed banks to remove their criteria to make loans to lower income people, many who defaulted. The greedy bankers and lenders need to be regulated, but not forced to change their criteria for ensuring loans are issued to qualified candidates.
complete bs. the housing bubble and most of the bad mortgages that went with it was not with lower income people, but middle class and upper middle class people leveraged to the hilt.
and the mortgage crisis would have been only a minor inconvenience to the banks if it weren't for the way they repackaged them as derivatives.
