re: #162 wheat-dogg

The biggest mistake the US made was to allow banks to expand out of their traditional role of lending money and enabling people to save money into investing other people’s money.

Especially repealing Glass-Steagall Act (which actually happened under Clinton), allowing mortgage bankers to engage in commercial speculation with mortgage money.

Mortgages are subsidized (indirectly through tax credits) so this was basically the government enabling an enormous speculative bubble.