All I said was there is no regulation needed, you might go back and read the post to see who got snippy first. As far as being an Ex-Marine, I don't think I have said that but a time or two on here, and I surely don't go on about being any hero. I think W. is an idiot for bailing these companies out, I think they should have had to lie in the bed they made. Why are you and I on the hook for these loans because some idiot banker made a bad loan to someone who had less than desireable credit. Now the government that can do very little right is going to be in the home business. I'll let you name the bet, that these people who did not pay back the money they borrowed are going to get to stay in these houses and you and I will pay the loans off. Plus the clowns that made the loans will get to keep their jobs and big salaries also. They should have failed, then someone with better business sense could have bought what was left. But noooooooooooo, the government is smarter than the rest of us, so they offered to take yours and my money and give it to these loosers.

Business will self regulate if government will just get out of the way.

I agree with most everything you wrote except that you don't hire a fox to guard the hen house. And you can't really believe that Big Business will police itself when LARGE profits are involved and multi-million dollars in compensation to be made by cooking the books or bending the rules.

CIVILITY - now there's something new for this post. And I agree wholeheartedly that we can, in fact, agree to disagree with civility.

here is some interesting info about the bank deregualtion bill that some have mistakenly used for blame- from national review online....

Who's responsible for the panic of 2008? In the gathering legend, it's one man, former Sen. Phil Gramm, the ex-John McCain adviser who lamented "a nation of whiners" a few months ago and therefore is fit to have responsibility for one of the nation's worst financial crises heaped on his head.

Gramm's gravest alleged sin is pushing the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley bank deregulation bill. Barack Obama has identified the legislation as ground zero of the financial implosion, the deregulatory predicate for Wall Street's excess. As a Texas conservative who afflicted liberaldom for years before decamping to Wall Street, Gramm is easy to vilify. That doesn't make the case against him any less unjust.

The law allowed commercial and investment banks to consolidate, repealing the New Deal-era Glass-Steagall Act that prevented banks from offering customers insurance, investment or commercial banking services. Gramm-Leach-Bliley tore down the artificial walls between financial institutions. Was this the disastrous mistake that it is now portrayed as on the stump? No.

One, Democrats in good standing supported the final bill. Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, Clinton Treasury officials whom Obama relies on for advice, supported it. Joe Biden voted for it, it passed the Senate with 90 votes, and President Clinton signed it. Heaven knows, Washington can make bipartisan mistakes, but if the bill were so obviously the road to financial perdition, presumably some of these Democrats much keener to regulate the economy than Gramm would have voted "no."

Two, the bill was a foregone conclusion. Europe already had so-called universal banking in which financial institutions could undertake varied operations. U.S. banks were finding loopholes in the law to keep up with foreign competitors, and increasingly bumped up against the 60-year-old regulatory constraints. The Gramm bill just blessed the world as it was already evolving.

Three, the legislation appears to have alleviated the current crisis rather than making it worse. Big, diversified financial institutions have been weathering the crunch better than anyone else and have occasionally swooped in to lessen the pain. Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch, which would have been impossible prior to Gramm's deregulation. Otherwise, Merrill would either have gone under or been bailed out by the taxpayers. Similarly, J.P. Morgan wouldn't have taken over Bear Stearns, and Barclays Bank wouldn't be considering buying Lehman Brothers.

Indeed, we've witnessed the end of the era of the large investment bank, with the dramatic decision of the last two firms standing, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, to transform themselves into traditional bank holding companies. The investment-bank model of relying on short-term markets for funding was no longer workable. Instead, Goldman and Morgan will rely more on less risky sources of funding, as regular banks do. Would we really want a 1930s law saying, "No, sorry, you have to remain pure investment banks and go bust"?

The root of this crisis is subprime loans lavished on people who couldn't truly afford their homes. This bad debt was securitized -- i.e., chopped up -- and spread throughout the system as complicated financial instruments. Gramm makes an unlikely villain here, since he always opposed the rush to give marginal borrowers mortgages -- and took hell for it from left-wing activist groups -- and his deregulation didn't create securitization or other financial exotica.

It's the very word "deregulation" that galls Gramm's critics. In their simplistic morality play, anything promoting it must be to blame. But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were practically arms of the government ("government-sponsored enterprises") and still did more than any other institution to spread the bad debt before requiring a bailout themselves.

It's certainly possible to fault lax regulation. The Securities and Exchange Commission's 2004 decision to allow the investment banks to double their leverage looks foolhardy. But the mistakes and mania that created this crisis can't be attributed to one man. In other words, Barack Obama and every other Democrat should lay off their scapegoat of the hour.