I agree that the government has its share of responsibility, but it's too simple to limit oneself to that. I also blame the people responsible for regulation.
As I said, I don't agree with Alan Greenspan when he says that high-risk mortgages were acceptable in 2000 and 2001. There were such obvious problems that there would have been grounds for changing the regulations in 2005 and 2006. I also blame investors. Why did they buy batches of high-risk mortgages when returns were so low, with risk both high and absolutely unknown? I have no sympathy for them. They made a serious mistake. Perhaps the government can correct that mistake, but they are adults; they used risk analysts who could have led them to make a different decision.
I also blame the population of the United States. Why did a family in California or Florida take out a $400,000 mortgage to buy a house worth $400,000 without making any downpayment? The banks that granted the mortgage did not even request proof of their income. After granting the mortgage, they did the checks and found that these people who had reported an income of $100,000 had none. They had not even had a job in the previous six months. Should we have sympathy for them? Should we just blame the government? No. A society can't rely solely on regulation and think that the government is always responsible for everything. Yes, the government had its share of responsibility. It made a mistake by encouraging too many people to take out mortgages without making downpayments. They made a mistake in the area of regulation, but everyone made a mistake: the people who granted the mortgages, the investors who made the mortgages and the public, citizens who took out the mortgages.