by Steven Gomez

Created on: October 23, 2008   Last Updated: October 27, 2008

There's plenty of blame to go around for our current economic crisis. More Americans are responsible for it than you would think:

- The Savings & Loan Industry: They forgot their purpose and suddenly focused on turning the biggest profit possible in the now. Their lobbying interests helped deregulate the Savings & Loan industry during the 1980's, setting the table not just for a recession later that decade, but for our current economic collapse.

Their goals were simple: remove restrictions so we can sell as many loans to as many people as possible, regardless of the risk.

- Deregulation: The Reagan Administration and key Republican legislators helped fuel the legislation that repealed many of the regulations on home loans enacted following the Great Depression. Lincoln Savings & Loan mogul Charles Keating formed a personal relationship with an important man during the 1970's through which he lobbied Congress for the deregulation of the Savings & Loan industry that got the ball rolling out of control. Once the Garn-St. Germain Depository Instituions Act was passed, the Savings & Loan industry had free rein to issue loans as they pleased.

That man who helped Keating enact this legislation? A U.S. Senator named John McCain.

- U.S. Senator Phil Gramm: In the late 90's, Gramm led the charge to get Congress to enact the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which reversed many Great Depressed-inspired protections, allowed banks to merge more freely and trade stock of itself on the market. This allowed the creation of megabanks whose collapse had the potential to take the nation's economy with it.

This also produced Enron's rise and subsequent fall, which inflated and distended corporate control over the nation's power supply, not to mention power rates, while Enron's failure proved a harbinger of what was to come as a result.

- The real estate industry: They were just as focused on turning a profit as the Savings & Loan industry. As more citizens gained access to financing, home builders threw up more homes and real estate firms jacked up the price on every home available, without a care as to whether the price was reasonable for the average citizen. They simply told potential buyers what they had to in order to sell the place, took the money and ran off to sell the next house, leaving the new homeowner holding the bag: in many cases, a hefty mortgage with time-bomb terms.

- A blind eye from Congress: Never at any point did Congress perk up and address the unnatural

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