The other day while waiting for my lunch I visited with some friends about the sugar beet harvest, the weather, the economy and of course the upcoming Bobcat-Grizzly game. I am sure most of of us have an opinion on all of these things plus many more, but I thought I might provide some information on who is to blame for the country’s financial condition.

According to printed articles in Time Magazine, the Washington Post, New York Times, the major television networks, and all of our cable and news networks there are many who were to blame, not just the Republicans or Democrats. With the bailout of Wall Street the taxpayers became investors in Wall Street, so we could possibly blame any of the following for our financial troubles.

1. The Wall Street Investment firms of Bear Stearns, headed by CEO Jimmy Cayne, Goldman Sachs’ CEO Hank Paulson, Dick Fuld of Lehman Brothers and Stan O’Neal of MerrrillLynch. Cayne watched as two of his highly leveraged hedge funds collapsed in 2007. Hank Paulson who would later become Secretary of the Treasury (which is another story), negotiated with SEC to allow investment banks to have more unsecured debts then previously allowed. Dick Fuld bankrolled banks all across the nation who were making questionable loans in the subprime market while he made $500 million in compensation. Stan O’Neal of Merrill Lynch who left in 2007 allowed his company to load up on $41 billiion of subprime mortgages. 2. The Housing Industry. Not the builders, not your local banks but people like David Lereah who headed the National Association of Realtors who trumpeted the infallibility of housing and even wrote a book about missing out on the housing boom. Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide Mortgages, whose company was sued for $8.7 billion to settle predatory-lending charges in 11 states while still pushing exotic loans to questionable applicants. Ian McCarthy of Beazer Homes, whose company’s sales tactics sold homes to many borrowers who were not qualified to buy much less rent. Frank Raines of Fannie Mae, who left in 2004 after an accounting scandal just as the firm was making huge investments in the subprime mortgage securities. Marion and Herb Sandler who promoted Adjustable Rate Mortgages, which offered ways to back load the loan that reduced the initial payment and sold their company Sandler’s World Savings Bank to Wachovia in 2006 for $2.3 billion which ended up collapsing Wachovi in 2008.

3. American consumers who live beyond their means and who kept borrowing and borrowing thinking the dream would never end.

4. Joe Cassano, as a member of AIG’s financial-products unit, he led the way in writing insurance policies on all of the credit default swaps that all of the big banks were using to protect themselves from the risky bets. Household debt rose from 60 percent of household income in 1982 to 130 percent in 2007.

5. Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve presided over the economic collapse by pushing more deregulation and admitted in October 2008 that he had made a mistake in presuming that the financial firms could regulate themselves.

6. The politicians and their appointees, Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush and their appointees including Chris Cox, Hank Paulson, Lawrence Summers, and Timothy Geithner all played a role in shaping policy or lobbying to change regulations which affected the market.

7. Former Sen. Phil Gramm, whose Senate Banking Committee from 1995-2000 wrote the repeal of the depression-era Glass-Steagall Act which had separated commercial banks from Wall Street. The deregulation led strong banks down the wrong path thinking the Federal Government would still protect their risky investments.

8. Kathleen Corbet, who ran the Standard and Poor’s rating firm on the very bonds made up of the mortgage backed securities that caused our crisis. A lot of the junk was rated AAA.

9. Bernie Madoff. Enough has been wrote and said. He was just a crook stealing everyone’s money. Unfortunately, the amount stolen was huge.

10. China. They have become our largest creditor – $1.7 trillion and growing daily. They use our debt to keep their own dollar low and their economy running smoothly.

So contrary to the present view that it must have been the fault of one political party like the big-spending Democrats or the party of no regulation like the Republicans, there are a lot of culprits. Our financial problems may have even started in the 1970s when the oil embargo caused changes in how the government regulated commodities, or maybe in the 1980s under President Reagan’s “the government is not the solution it is the problem.” Let’s not forget about the 1990s when there was a Democratic president who, in trying to ride the middle of the road, produced even further deregulation of the financial market while pushing for more homeownership for low-income Americans.

And then we finally get to the last 10 years, when Republican appointee, Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, stated on March 11, 2008, “We have a good deal of comfort about the capital cushions at these firms (investment banks on Wall Street) at this moment.”

Perhaps it was a signal for the super wealthy to start taking their money out of the Stock Market because three days later Bear Stearns was forced to sell to JP Morgan with the help of the Federal Government (you and me) to the tune of $29 billion. Within six months other companies like Wachovia, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs went down the same taxpayer financed path. According to Secretary Paulson, a Bush appointee, the above firms were “too big to fail.”

There’s enough blame to go around. No one with a straight face could say this was a Republican caused problem or a Democrat caused problem, but one thing is sure it is now our generation’s problem and no doubt the generation after us will have to make sacrifices to solve this crisis.

Paul Groshart is a current member of the Sidney City Council.