Question Inspired By An Episode Of NPR's Intelligence Squared:

[jennythereader]

Who do you blame more for the current financial crisis? Washington or Wall Street?

Personally I'd split the blame 52% Wall Street/ 48% Washington. Washington wrote the rules in a way that left a lot of loopholes, but Wall Street decided to walk through them.

The episode in question

Comments

[nounsandverbs]

My pie chart would be something like:

34% Washington, which in the name of increased home ownership rates gave Federal backing to a lot of risky mortgages, thus encouraging people to buy homes they really couldn't afford -- and also rewrote the securities rules for the benefit of ...

33% Wall Street, which saw a profit in repackaging and selling those mortgages in all sorts of arcane financial instruments, so when the crash happened, no one really knew who owned what -- thereby ensuring that the damage, and panic, were extensive and global ...

And 33% of the blame rests with that portion of Americans (not all, but definitely some) who, in the interest of getting something for nothing, allowed themselves to be convinced that, yes, you can afford that more expensive home, and sure, that low adjustable-rate mortgage won't jump to a rate that will leave you homeless.

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

Well, if you're going to spread the blame around more...

I still say Wall Street has a larger share than Washington.

[dwarven-brewer.livejournal.com]

30% Washington, 30% Li for inenting the theorem that wall street chose to use to justify those mortgages and 30% wall street.

[nounsandverbs]

I'll grant you the line between those two groups is usually very blurry.