Mike Konczal presented a nice rebuttal to Marco Rubio’s claim that the government caused the housing crisis in the post, No, Marco Rubio, government did not cause the housing crisis. Unfortunately both men seem to ignore the first conclusion listed in the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report. The Commission laid  the blame equally at the feet of captains of finance(i.e. business) and public stewards of our financial system(i.e. government). Although I believe the greed of the American people deserve equal billing in this blame game, here is the Commission’s eloquent explanation of the blame.

We conclude this financial crisis was avoidable.The crisis was the result of human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire. The captains of finance and the public stewards of our financial system ignored warnings and failed to question, understand, and manage evolving risks within a system essential to the well-being of the American public. Theirs was a big miss, not a stumble. While the business cycle cannot be repealed, a crisis of this magnitude need not have occurred. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the fault lies not in the stars, but in us.