Who's to blame?

Defenders of President Bush are now in spread-the-blame mode, focusing on the Community Reinvestment Act as the root cause of the financial breakdown. This has the intended effect of shifting some of the blame to the Clinton administration.

The CRA was a foul piece of social engineering, requiring lenders to grant specific levels of lending to borrowers who were, in many cases, bad credit risks. It was enacted in 1977 during the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter. The act should have been repealed long ago but remains in force because minority lobbies and liberals rely on it to maintain their standing in the compassion caucus.
They received credit for the compassion. Now they're taking your taxes to pay the hidden costs.

Ordinarily, an attempt to throw mud at a president who left office almost eight years ago would be snuffed by newpaper readers and voters alike. In my experience, they informally enforce an Iron Law of Blameworthiness that goes like this: A president who, during eight years in office, has failed to block or repeal the evil policies of his predecessors owns any resulting calamity.
Under those terms, Bill Clinton and his predecessors would skate.
Are those terms applicable? I'm not sure.

In my view, there were two separate binges of social engineeering that should be considered individually.

The most insidious and destructive was the long series of government mandates and interest group pressures, beginning in the 1970s, that forced private lenders to become servants of racial hustlers and radical pressure groups.
These forces were channeled by Democratic politicians into Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which became champions of subprime lending, fueling inflation in housing. Freddie and Fannie,in turn, became benefactors of Democrats candidates.
Liberal luminaries such as Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank demonstrated that subversion of the free market in mortgage lending could be profitable, both politically and financially.

Not surprisingly, the subprime market grew.

By lowering interest rates repeatedly, the Bush administration may have aggravated inflation in housing, but its culpability pales in comparison with the relentless social engineering that preceded it.