Musings of One Trying to Remember What a Flint Lock Was

Here is my take on responsibility for the mortgage meltdown and the recession. It's based on what I have been able to glean from various news reports, talk shows, and printed reports. Listed below, in descending order of importance, are those whom I think were, in my opinion, responsible for the mortgage meltdown:
1. Mr. and Mrs. J. Q. Smith of main street USA who bought a house they could not afford, took on a mortgage not justified by their income, and later when the value of the house rose- took out a home equity loan without really considering the possible risks. (I'm not blaming them, that's human nature, in the same circumstances others of us might do the same thing. What I'm doing is trying to assign responsibility.)
2. Real estate agents and others who entered fraudulent data on loan applications in order to qualify the buyer for a bigger mortgage.
3. The government and large lending institutions, which over the years, cooperated to relax lending standards to the point where a homeless person without a job could qualify to buy a home, with nothing down and 40 years or so to pay it off. I'll admit to some hyperbole's here.
4. Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, which provided a market for mortgages, but apparently didn't carefully analyze the risks.
5. Wall street for packaging mortgage obligations into securities and selling them world wide.

In my opinion, also a factor in the recession was unrestrained use of credit by individuals to the point where they could no longer buy things on credit.

Instead of accepting responsibility it seems that everybody is busy pointing fingers at everybody else. Reminds me of a line from some piece of literature, (I would gladly credit the author if I had any idea of who he was): "Lord Henry stormed out the door, flung himself onto his horse, and galloped off madly in all directions."

Oh well!