Which was sorta the point of the CRA, to the point of where if you weren't handing out enough of those loans you'd be penalized.  So really, lot of blame all around.

Still wouldn't of bailed out the banks though. 

If congress hadn't repealed the Glass Steagall Act they would not have been to big to prosecute/fail.  The act was created to prevent another Great Recession.  It prevents Banks and Insurance and Investment houses from being ONE. 

While accepting that under Glass–Steagall financial firms could still have “made, sold, and securitized risky mortgages, all the while fueling a massive housing bubble and building a highly leveraged, Ponzi-like pyramid of derivatives on top,” the New Rules Project concludes that commentators who deny the GLBA played a role in the financial crisis “fail to recognize the significance of 1999 as the pivotal policy-making moment leading up to the crash.” The Project argues 1999 was Congress’s opportunity to reject 25 years of “deregulation” and “confront the changing financial system by reaffirming the importance of effective structural safeguards, such as the Glass–Steagall Act's firewall and market share caps to limit the size of banks; bringing shadow banks into the regulatory framework; and developing new rules to control the dangers inherent in derivatives and other engineered financial products.”

In theory maybe... but not in practice.   Banks were allowed to offer investment services and vice versa long before Glass Stegal was repealed.

By the time it was repealed all Glass-Steagal stopped was the merging of banks.

Also, it's worth pointing out the banks that first failed were all investment banks.   They weren't the investment/Retail combos that Glass-Steagal prevented.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/reinstating-an-old-rule-is-not-a-cure-for-crisis/

Glass-Steagal likely could of made the crisis slightly smaller but I think your overstimating it's impact.  A lot of banks just organically grew instead of merging.  Or aquired stuff that they could of aquired anyway.

It's also worth noting just how popular Glass Steagal was.... Both Republicans and Democrats voted for it uniformly... mostly because Europeon banks were crushing us because they didn't have the same rule.  

Granted Europeon banks don't loo so good now but for different reasons.

Really it was more regulators not doing their job.  Not that there weren't laws in place.  Just nobody did their job.  

During the Savings and Loan crisis 1,000 bankers went to jail.  Granted there was more fraud during that crisis.  

You blame on these people, but it's the banks that are stupid. The banks KNEW these people couldn't afford to pay for these mortgages, but they done it anyway, just to make a quick buck. If banks remained regulated (thanks abunch George Bush!), then the banks might have been more responsible and thus prevented this mess. Also, basing economic growth on one area, in this case housing is always a disaster waiting to happen. Even, developed economies must diversify their sectors, then a recession won't be so bad. 

if anything it was the government "coercing" these banks to do these to increase home ownership. You cant blame the banks when they were doing what they were told, like most things wrong in this country in come to the mismanagemnet and bad decisions made by american leadership in congress and the white house.

Yeah it didn't help when that government just let them do what they want