The problem as I see it is a lightly regulated economy has natural checks and balances in place that deal with "undesireable" behavior. Government intervention, like massive bailouts of financial institutions and auto manufacturers, eliminates these checks and balances and produces different disincentives which cause institutions to perform other "undesireable" behaviors.

When you consider the home buyers who purchased homes at (well) above average prices, home speculaters and realtors who drove those prices well above average levels, mortgage brokers and banks who approved loans which were doomed to fail, investors who bought these doomed mortgages, home builders who continued to build houses even though unsold inventory was near record highs, and people who used their imaginary home-equity as a piggy bank to buy things they don't need, it becomes obvious that most people need to be punished for their (amazingly) risky behavior in order to provice the moral hazard for future investors.

The government's actions are to simply return everyone to the status quo and continue with this (amazingly) risky behavior

This. But put better than me.

Dems had a ~51 majority for the past two years, 1 or 2 Dems don't tow the party line or argue over some arbitrary point and the bill dies.

IN fact, the Reps only had a ~50-51 majority since 2001, so for the deregulation you have to blame everyone from the past 3 decades...

For the massive debt and destabilizing the middle east, breaking consumer confidence by being an inept leader, and for eliminating the free market by stopping the free passage of information that prize goes to Bush and the republican congress.

Saying Dems didn't get us out of war over the last years is stupid, because they didn't run on that platform in 2006. They ran on a platform of fixing it and switching the mission to stabalize to the point we could leave. They caused the resignation of Rumsfeld, and the replacement with Gates (Bush rushed it through before they took over, so the dems wouldn't get the credit). Since then they did prevent funding from going through with out controlling the mission, and the mission has quickly become a success. Because Bush was forced to put in non-partisan leadership, because of Patraeus, and because of congressional oversight.

A ~51 majority cannot challenge a President set on deregulation, so why waste the time when they have to fix so many infrastructure and other problems ignored by congress for the previous 12 years.

Those 49 Democrats in the Senate just had so much power didn't they.  They could have pushed anything through they would have wanted, and could have easily gotten enough votes to override any of the President's vetos.  And obviously people like Lieberman would have jumped right on board to cutting funding for the war.

You seem to think that having a slim majority in the Senate means that the Democrats are "running the economy" our that Republicans have no responsibility for the economy.  Our that the President couldn't just veto anything the Democrats actually got through, our that the Republicans in the Senate couldn't just filibuster anything since the Democrats don't have enough votes to reach cloture.

You can throw around a lot more blame in the next two years once the Democrats start botching things, but expecting them to be able to run the government at a surplus is next to impossible.  Hell, Bush and the Republicans in Congress (who are supposed to be fiscally conservative) couldn't even do it while the economy WAS functioning.

I do blame everyone. Some people on this site, seem to only blame the republicans. As for the middle east and debt (combined thing), that goes to both as well. If congress was 100% democrat, the vote on the war would have passed by a large margin. Almost everyone in congress voted for it.

Actually i think 60% or so of house democrats voted against it.  The Senate though I think the dems were pro-war.

Edit: Yeah I was right

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Resolution#Passage

61% of dems in the house against.