CNN iReport

Is the Bush Administration, republican deregulation and greed the cause of the economic crisis or something a little more scary?

Late in President Bill Clinton's tenure, the Clinton White House put forth a document celebrating "Historic Economic Growth" during the administration and pointing to the policy accomplishments it deemed responsible for this growth in the 1990's. Among the achievements on Clinton's list were none other than "Modernizing for the New Economy through Technology and Consensus Deregulation." That's right, a Clinton White House document credited part of the administration's success to that now dreaded d-word, “deregulation”.

TRIGGERS TO CRISIS:

In 1993 the laws that governed America's financial service sector were deemed antiquated and anti-competitive by the Clinton-Gore Administration. So they fought to modernize those laws to increase competition in traditional banking, insurance, and securities industries to give consumers greater access to home ownership and small business access to cheap financing through deregulated/high risk loans at lower cost (low cost at least initially).

DEMOCRAT CAUSE ONE:

Clinton’s expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act, an area where the administration encouraged bad loans to be made.

DEMOCRAT CAUSE TWO:

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley law of 1999 Clinton signed repealing the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act that strictly separated traditional commercial banking from investment banking. A bill that passed the legislation 90-8 and one which Joe Biden himself voted for.

DEMOCRAT CAUSE THREE:

The Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act, was passed in 1994, before Republicans even took over Congress. And The Clinton White House "Historic Economic Growth" document boasts that "in 1994, the Clinton-Gore Administration broke another decades-old logjam by allowing banks to branch across state lines."

AN ATTEMPTED RESCUE FOR THE IMPENDING RECESSION

BUSH THE FINANCIAL REGULATOR:

In stark contrast to what the Barack Obama administration and the other line toting liberal politicians have been spouting in the airwaves, Bush actually broke records in regulation with tens of thousands of pages put in the Federal Register. So to the extent that Obama says he will reverse financial deregulation, what he would largely be overturning are the financial modernizations and deregulation that Clinton signed and arrogantly prided the 1990’s economic expansion on…the beginning of the crisis.

BUSH’S PLAN TO REGULATE FANNIE MAE / FREDDIE MAC:

Under Bush’s plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing September 2003, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

DEMOCRAT MEDDLING HAMPERS BUSH’S ATTEMPT TO PROTECT ECONOMY

However this much needed regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was brought to halt by democrat meddling. ''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

It also turns out that Democratic Sens. John Kerry, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were the top four recipients of Fannie and Freddie campaign contributions from 1988 to 2008 — actively opposed such measures and further weakened existing regulation. In 2005 the bill was finally blocked procedurally by democrats in congress.

SARBANES-OXLEY:

If anything Bush’s signature financial regulation achievement was the signing and implementing of the probably the greatest financial REGULATION to date, the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting mandates.

So before you blame Bush and republicans for the recession and economic crisis:

FOR ONE: remember that in reality it was caused by big handed liberal policies put forth in the Clinton Administration that drove significant expansion of the economy in the short-term led to today's economic meltdown in the long run.

TWO: Bush made several attempts to regulate the out of control financial markets set in place by Clinton, only to be stopped by congressional democrats...some for nothing more than protecting their political interests (aka Obama).