Would that be the Democratic Congress of the last two years? Or the Republican Congress of the six years prior? Uh-huh. Got it.
While we're looking things up, let's look up Paul O'Neill and John Snow, Bush's first two Treasury secretaries who had no backgrounds in finance. (by the time Paulson came on board, it was too late). Let's also check out SEC lead Christopher Cox, who actively encouraged regulators to aspire to not regulate. Or former SEC chairman William Donaldson, who quit his post because the White House and Republican lawmakers refused to support stiffer regulation on Wall Street. And let's not forget Reagan gimp Alan Greenspan, whose lack of appetite for banking regulation is legendary.
The banking/housing market flatlining can be certainly be ascribed to individuals on both sides, B. Frank and Bill Clinton among them. But one can't point out Fannie Mae without also pointing to mortgage-backed securities, hedge funds, fiscal and tax policies that made us more dependent on ex-U.S. capital, etc. In the end, the lion's share can go to conservative philosophy generally, which zealously and blindly calls any government oversight of any kind bad.
Sorry Darla. Ninth inning grandstanding and cherry-picking names won't change the fact that this crisis happened on the watch of the Bush administration. We are eight years into their administration and they've had plenty of time and support to manage things. Instead they mismanaged.