Bill Clinton at fault for current recession?

Reagan's fault.... no control on the market..

Blaming Bill Clinton entirely for the recession is completely moronic, but he had a fair hand in it too. Deregulation of the economy in general, and the financial industry specifically has been pushed hard by both sides since the Reagan years, and Clinton had his part in that. That's why the economy started to grow faster than it should have during the 90's, and why the tech boom started to unravel shortly before Clinton left office.

Clinton also signed the The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which is often cited as being one of the major deregulatory bills leading to this whole mess.

Don't let Clinton's involvement fool anyone into absolving Republicans of the blame - deregulation was still much more their cause. It's at the heart of Reaganomics. It was still a bill of chiefly Republican ideas, but those ideas were popular among moderates at the time too, because Wall Street was still looking good.

Partially; the last major piece of legislation he signed before he left office was the deregulation of the derivatives market, a major player in the collapse. (Thanks Aestro.. I had forgotten the name of it)

The community reinvestment act also gets much of the blame, but the first & most sweeping version of this happened under Carter in '77.

Bush 41 was also at fault, as well as 43, and there were some elements that Reagan left behind that came to sting us, as well as Nixon (think "War on Drugs").

We haven't had a president that hasn't done significant damage since Ford.

If you really want to be thorough, you can find players to blame for the last 100 years. Woodrow Wilson destroyed the real USA in 1913 with the Federal Reserve act, as well as other actions.

Obama just screwed us all again today, with Nancy Regan at his side.. with the first of many new healthcare piracy bills. God help us all.

Each President has had there hand in the issues we face today, but it really was started with Jimmy the peanut freakin Carter... During the Carter Administration he did away with the Glass Steagal Act which prevented banks to be both a Corporate Bank and a Investment Bank... What that means is one bank would invest the other would save. (in laymen terms) So... since Carter you would take your money to the Bank say Citi... they would then take your money and use it to invest for themselves, with a ridiculous amount of leverage behind it.

See where this is going? As long as the dollar was strong... no issues. As soon as something happens and it weakens... All hell will break out just like you are seeing now. I also want to point out that the Glass Steagal Act was put into place after the Great Depression to prevent another bad recession/depression and it worked until it was taken away.

As far as Clinton... Clinton force banks to give people that did not qualify for loans.. loans. He did this thru Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. (Government ran banks) and what they were doing was Fannie Mae would take take these loans and bundle a bunch of these up and then trade them in the market as securities. They then could take these securities and get loans from countries like oooh say... China or Japan. They were making a killing!!! it was free money. As long as the dollar was strong the bank of Japan would give us 8 to 1 so now for every million dollars worth of loans the bank would lend out they could get 8 million back... It really was free money.

All was honky dory thru Clinton and Bush Sr. up until Bush Jr. Then we had a lil thing called 9/11 which killed the dollar and don't forget the hurricanes and what not.. But the dollar bounced back a was doing extremely well again till the bubble popped. The dollar fell (remember gas prices over 4 bucks?) Which caused everything in motion... People could not pay for their houses so they walked away (in record numbers) so now, the banks cannot pay for their debts cuz money is not coming in... the dollar keeps getting weaker which means the house that they loaned 200K for is only worth 175K so now their books are off (Mark to Market). Then because the banks began to loose their soverignty they could not give loans out - which forced people out of business and credit to vanish. Halting everything.

It really was a snowball effect... blame can be placed all of the place not with just one guy but it can be spread out to about 545 people. That is the amount of Government Officals we have elected...

Hope this helps!~

Bill Clinton initiated a policy (whose name escapes me at this moment) that basically said that everyone is entitled to a house. It specified that lenders not pass up someone who is poor or black, or else they would be subject to discrimination.

That is why the rules about lending were so relaxed. It wasn't until interest rates went down and home prices increase that people started buying houses they had no business buying. When they couldn't pay the banks back, the housing bubble popped.

NO. His recession was in 2001 as he left office. It was mild until 911 happened and then got painful for a couple of quarters, The changes in banking occurred in his lame duck year so he is way out of the picture for this.

YES! It was one of the last things Clinton did before he left office.

Look up the COMMUNITY REINVESTMENT ACT. The act made it easier for low income people to buy a home.

That is what lead to the housing bubble and ultimately this recession.

So, somewhat directly/indirectly, yes!

Even Obama sued citibank under the Community Reinvestment Act. They claimed that Citibank was redlining minorities and not approving their loans because they were minorities, essentially. The sudden ease of buying a home caused the prices to jump because of the jump in demand. Soon people were buying houses they could not afford. When the bubble popped these people defaulted on loans, crashed our banking system and then blamed it on Bush.

Ridiculous, we were at full employment then. Reagan and Bush 41 were racking up debt that Clinton had begun to pay down, then GW started sky rocketing debt again. Tax cuts are very expensive.

Not this one, but we did have a recession in his final year which carried into 2001.

People always want to try and fix blame for everything.

They think it is always someones fault.

Recessions are naturally occurring and come on regular cycles.

The economy goes up, then falls, then goes up again.

People try blaming certain individuals, political parties or industries.

Sounds like a reach to me. When Clinton gave us a surplus, they credited Bush. Now a different Bush gives us a recession and they blame Clinton.