Where is the US economy headed?

So because the Republicans did not press their argument strong enough to push legislation through to straighten this mess out, in the face of predominantly naysaying by the Democrats, it is then the Republicans fault, ci? Democrats accused Republicans of wanting to institute unnecessary new oversight, when none were necessary, and that Republicans wanted to deprive people of home ownership, etc.

''The world changes, and we have to change with it,'' said Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, who wrote the law that will bear his name along with the two other main Republican sponsors, Representative Jim Leach of Iowa and Representative Thomas J. Bliley Jr. of Virginia. ''We have a new century coming, and we have an opportunity to dominate that century the same way we dominated this century. Glass-Steagall, in the midst of the Great Depression, came at a time when the thinking was that the government was the answer. In this era of economic prosperity, we have decided that freedom is the answer.''

In the House debate, Mr. Leach said, ''This is a historic day. The landscape for delivery of financial services will now surely shift.''

The opponents of the measure gloomily predicted that by unshackling banks and enabling them to move more freely into new kinds of financial activities, the new law could lead to an economic crisis down the road when the marketplace is no longer growing briskly.

''I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010,'' said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. ''I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.''

Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, said that Congress had ''seemed determined to unlearn the lessons from our past mistakes.''

''Scores of banks failed in the Great Depression as a result of unsound banking practices, and their failure only deepened the crisis,'' Mr. Wellstone said. ''Glass-Steagall was intended to protect our financial system by insulating commercial banking from other forms of risk. It was one of several stabilizers designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.''

It is easy to point to repeal of Glass-Steagall as the culprit.

But in fact, if it had not been government, promoted by both Democrats and Republicans, to encourage, even require, financial institutions to abandon sound banking principles, the repeal of Glass-Steagall would have scarcely been noticed.

To not repeal it would only have concentrated the problem among fewer institutions, but it would still have occurred.

The fact is, our elected leaders abdicated their responsibility to exercise good stewardship of the people's money. No matter who you try to hang it on out of political expediency, the responsibility is squarely there.

It is easy to say that those businesses should have had the discipline/integrity to pass them up.

It is easy to say that it is easy to forego easy profits--legal profits--when they are there for the taking. It is easy to say that those businesses should have had the discipline/integrity to pass them up.

But it is also easy to say that the housing bubble would most likely have not been created to such unsustainable levels had financial institutions not been allowed to make risky loans to people who had no ability to repay them and/or no reliable track record of paying their bills.

The CRA did not cause that, but it was Congress taking advantage of loopholes/principles in the CRA that provided the impetus to do so,

and it was Congress that failed to act when it became apparent that we had a serious problem--those in the best position to act in fact denied that there was a serious problem.

I( do not blame business for taking gifts handed to them by an irresponsible government.

Had those businesses been advised of the risk they were taking, most almost certainly would not have taken it. They were not so advised.

Nobody doesn't care if their company goes from great prosperity to the verge of bankruptcy in a matter of weeks or months. To say they didn't care is absurd. They took a calculated risk, sometimes unknowingly took a risk, based on their belief (and assurances given) that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were sound which made the risk acceptable.

Nobody doesn't care if their company goes from great prosperity to the verge of bankruptcy in a matter of weeks or months. To say they didn't care is absurd.