Who's to blame for the financial collapse?

As we all sit helplessly by watching the value of our retirement funds plummet before our eyes, people are wondering, and rightly so, who's to blame. Is it the hubris of arrogant CEO's at Lehman Brothers, Merrill-Lynch, Fannie and Freddie Mac, AIG, and hundreds of smaller regional and local banks? Is it the US government for encouraging risky loans in order to get more money into the economy? Is it the failure of government regulators to properly oversee these lending practices? Or are these failures the result of a perfect storm of arrogance and government meddling?

I know it's painful when it happens but, the market has built-in corrections that punish arrogant CEO's who make bad decisions....the company goes out of business. The problem happened when administrations from Carter through Bush forced mortgage institutions to loan money to completely unqualified people, in attempts to provide affordable housing to deadbeats who had no business borrowing money. When ever the government injects itself into any market, disaster is right around the corner. But from a political standpoint, it's too tempting for craven politicians to not make themselves look magnanimous by being nice to the less fortunate. (By "less fortunate" of course I mean those people who are having to live with the consequences of a lifetime's worth of bad choices....also known as the democrat voting base)

The following things need to happen: 1-get the government out of the mortgage business. Companies who cannot compete without government backing should not exist. 2-regulators should be independent, not members of Congress, otherwise there's the obvious conflict of interest. 3-When banks fail, let them fail, and fail hard and fast. No taxpayer bail-outs 4-it can't be forced but, stock-holders in investment banks should demand reasonable CEO compensation packages tied to performance. No more billion-dollar golden parachutes. As it stands, there's no downside to being reckless for these guys. If the company fails, they either walk away billionaires, or the government uses taxpayer money to prop them up. Why not be reckless?

It looks like the sky is falling but it's not. We'll recover from this as we recover from every bump in the road...as long as we can keep the government from meddling in the process....but I wouldn't hold my breath.