Over the past 2 years we have heard about the "cause" of the financial crisis from the right wing and as usual no blame went toward the banksters on Wall Street. This financial crisis has been years in the making and it was due to the diligence of the republican party and their obsession with deregulation that enabled this to happen.
Republicans have always loathed Franklin Roosevelt's policies. These policies protected the average American from the overzealous corporations who put profits before people. One of these such policies was the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933
The Glass-Steagall Act provided oversight and created a wall of seperation that would prohibit banks and other financial companies from merging into giant trusts which was put together by the Roosevelt administration enabled regulating of banks to help prevent market instability, especially amongst Wall Street banks. The purpose of the act is to separate commercial banks that focus on consumers from investment banks, which deal with speculative trading and mergers.
The Gramm,Leach and Bliley Act which repealed Glass-Steagall was the end game for the house of cards to come tumbling down. Sen. Gramm was the driving force behind the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, because he had received over $4.6 million in donations from FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate donations) over the previous decade, and once the Act passed, "megamergers" took place among banks and insurance and securities companies almost immediately
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