Stop blaming Bush

So one of the rants I have often seen leftists make on forums (and occasionally on television if my memory is serving me right) is that yes, the economic problems we currently face are very large and deep, but the Tea Party and their proponents such as Sarah Palin are stupid idiots for thinking that the solution to the mess is to just put Joe Sixpack in charge (to use the phrase of one guy on a forum).

Well ignoring the fact that I don't think the Tea Party types are promoting necessarilly just putting Joe Sixpack in charge, one thing these very leftists repeatedly keep doing that I do not understand is blaming Bush for the cause of the economic problems.

Their reasoning seems to be: "These problems are very deep and there are no easy answers or solutions; the actual problems themselves are not really fully understood yet. But Bush did it."

Now of course, exactly how President Bush caused it, is never addressed. What these "failed Bush policies" President Obama keeps referring to, precisely are, you never really see defined. The reality is that, just as the solutions to the crises are complex, so is the cause. You could literally fill an entire shelf with books and you still would not have a full understanding of the causes of this crises. There are all sorts of variables involved:

Deregulation of certain areas perhaps
Excessive regulation of certain areas it seems
Lack of oversight from the SEC as they couldn't keep track of all the information from the regulations
Greedy mortgage lenders who lent mortgages to those who wouldn't be able to pay them back
Greedy home buyers who took out mortgages they should not have
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Bad monetary policy on the part of the Federal Reserve
Excessive spending by the Bush administration (now with further spending by the Obama administration it seems)

...and so forth. There are probably other things I did not cover that I am not thinking of right now or just am not aware of. But this crises is like the Great Depression. There were a lot of variables that created what we now know of as "the Great Depression." Just the same, this current crises's causes were very complex and deep.

And the Republicans can get faulted somewhat for this kind of simplistic reasoning too. Claims ranging from "Bush did it" and "failed Bush policies" to "Democrats did it with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac" to "Reagan did it" to "Alan Greenspan did it!" all are grossly oversimplifying this topic.