[peter12]

Originally Posted by llama64

What government intrusion are you talking about?

Everything I've read about the lead-up to this whole problem was that the Federal Reserve backed off on their regulations or followed a very limited role due to the ineptitude of Alan Greenspan. They freed the banks from having to carry acceptable capital to debt ratios and started allowing high risk speculative investing to be made by the banks using people's stored money. And when that went south, as all markets inevitably do, people lost their homes due to a few greedy bankers.

The mortgages should never have been granted, and in a properly regulated world, they wouldn't have. The lack of regulation directly led to one of the major causes of this downturn. There is far more to it then this I know, but at least I'm providing an example.

Fannie and Freddie Mac.