Not sure why author is confused. Here's how it went down:

- Congress needed votes
- Easiest way to get them is to be a populist
- The tool: Everyone should be able to buy a home
- The approach: Remove red tape
- Why demand that people actually prove income?
- Both major political parties at fault
- Lenders, well, start lending
- Government guarantees any loan
- A McDonalds worker can buy a $500K home
- No-docs, zero down, interest-only loans invented
- Wall street help is needed to write more loans
- Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO) invented
- Now we can loan to even more non-qualified buyers
- Now people can invest in loans made to non-qualified buyers
- Mutual funds jump in
- What could go wrong? It's a party.
- Thanks US Congress!
- The frenzied environment takes to new heights
- Every institution working under the law
- This is what Congress wanted
- Happy people buying homes
- Well worry about affordability later
- Gimme your votes
- Valuations went insane
- And then the music stopped
- Eventually the McDonalds worker had to face the
fact that he/she owed $500K
- People bought $1.5 million dollar homes and woke
up to their mortgage payment quadrupling overnight
- Chain reaction of defaults
- CDO's were hot potatoes nobody wanted
- Mutual funds imploded
- Municipalities invested in CDO's went bankrupt
- Strategic defaults were invented
- Businesses and individuals went bankrupt by the millions
- Hundreds of thousands of jobs are lost every month
- The effect is international
- The US government picks winners and losers
- Banks and auto manufacturers are bailed out
- Politicians start to blame bankers and "greedy"
Wall Street brokers
- The lynching mob focuses on them in complete
ignorance of who truly triggered the entire mess
- Politicians got their votes while imploding the
world economy and came out looking good as they
talked about going after the "evil bankers"
- Of course, they didn't go after anyone because
there was nothing to go after
- Banks and Wall Street were operating under the
rules and laws passed by Congress
- It was a case of political collateral damage taken
to an extreme
- And almost every single one of them is still in office

The real cause was greedy politicians (not banks and Wall Street) and their use of populism as a tool.

A decidedly evil tool in the hands of politicians who take advantage of the uneducated masses for their own benefit.

Latin America is going through a bit of an awakening and a revolt precisely aimed at the massive destruction populism has caused in nearly every country south of the US. It's a disaster that will take decades, if not generations, to repair. While few seem ready to recognize it, we have exactly the same problem in the US.

A woman from Guatemala named Gloria Alvarez has emerged as one of the most vocal and intelligent figures in a multi-national effort to push back on populism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkYEXS16dZA

Don't be led by the nose by politicians who only care about using you for their own benefit. As we have seen and as Latin American has seen, allowing populism to reign unchecked can have dire consequences.

In the US both parties are guilty of populism but the left has taken it to "expert level" over the last few years. The technique is to divide us by race, occupation, educational level, income and any other criteria they can find. You appoint an "enemy" for each divided class: whites vs. blacks, rich vs. poor, blue collar vs. white collar, etc. You focus the masses on the enemies and promise you will find solutions for their grievances.

And, just like that, you have masses willing, ready and able to cast votes for you. Once in office, you drop them on your heads and ignore them. Why? You need the groups to remain at odds with each other in order to continue pumping them for votes. You give them just enough to feel OK but strategically keep them miserable for your own benefit.

Don't believe me? Look at how effective the various "wars" have been: drugs, poor, education, etc. Decades of promises that magically never seem to come true. Why?

Populism loves the poor so much they multiply them.

Don't be a tool.