There are lots of views of the "truth" on the causes of the housing mess but I'll take BusinessWeek's analysis over a YouTube vid by someone named mouthpeace.

Please read:

http://www.businessweek.com/investing/insights/blog/archives/2008/09/community_reinv.html

Obviously everything found on YouTube or even Businessweek is not accurate. Aaron Pressmen also wrote an article this week titled: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were Victims, not Culprits on his Businessweek Blog. There are a lot of very informed people who would disagree. I found YouTube to be very informative today. Lots of old CSPAN footage that would be undisputable fact of what specific people said. Eventually you have to decide for yourself which is wheat, which is chaff.

My own conclusion is that there are no clean hands, nor any single cause.

The left helped start the housing bubble by pushing for looser lending.

The right helped blow up the bubble because there was so much money to be made on it.

After 9/11 our economic "recovery" was built almost entirely on cheap money and rising debt both private and public.

Now the bill is due.