“lax lending practices earlier this decade led to irresponsible lending and irresponsible borrowing.”

[MacMagus]

> who has a greater share of the blame

This is one of those situations where it almost looks like the government and private industry conspired to create the crisis.

Before deregulation, banks could continue to make loans so long as they had 15% of their value in reserves. After deregulation, U.S. banks supposedly averaged a 40:1 ratio of loans to assets. The difference was made up with credit from other banks.

So first came deregulation, then came abuse... Then came Greenspan trying to keep us out of a recession by playing with the interest rates, which temporarily propped up the stock market as well as encouraging unwise investments leveraged upon easy credit, including new construction and home-buying. It was a powder keg waiting for a spark.