A new narrative

I hadn't heard this one before which may mean I'm deaf; or it could be that it's taken three years and the associated fading memories to concoct.

The cause of the debt crisis 

Greedy home owners and Democrat ideologues were jointly to blame for the financial meltdown. Here's why:

The former took out mortgages, of their own volition and with no encouragement from anyone else, that they knew (being the financial sages and visionaries they are) they couldn't afford.

They were aided and abetted in this by Democrats who "forced" the banks to write unsound mortgages which they would never have done otherwise¹. The banks were therefore obligated, simply out of a fiduciary duty to shareholders, to defray the risk they were being blackmailed into taking on. They did this by packaging these risky loans and selling them on to counter-parties who should have known what they were buying - caveat emptor². So it wasn't the fault of the companies selling arsenic-laced CDOs and CDSs.

Conclusion: the banks are actually innocent victims in a socialist plot cooked up by the people in the lowest income segments of society and their Democratic "enablers", and to add insult to injury, Wall street is now suffering unjustified and vindictive reprisals from the AGs and other regulatory agencies.

My goodness - isn't that a great story? A+ for creativity. All the more reason to worry about 1) who writes the history and 2) who controls choice of history books kids are told to buy. This one is right up there with creationism. 

^{1 - The Democrats controlled both houses and the executive branch for only 2 years in the quarter century preceding the crisis while in the 4 years immediately leading up to the financial meltdown, Republicans held the executive and both chambers.
2 - Since the counter-parties to these transactions were themselves banks, if the seller is not responsible for the ensuing mess, then the buyer must be. Either way banks as buyers or sellers are implicated and regulation is clearly need to prevent these systemically damaging transactions from being made.}