Is that things pretty much worked out in the Randian vision of unregulated markets 'self-correcting'- pretty much the philosophy of Greenspan, pretty much the ideals of the republican party, pretty much the stated aims behind many of the republican led acts of de-regulation. Can you find Democrats that went along, even enthusiastically? Sure.

But the point remains that faith in un-regulated markets, and the belief that reglation must be avoided at all costs in new markets, and removed form the 'back' of existing markets is a fundamental paltform of the Republican party.

Okay, stay with me here Tom, I know its hard...

So, what markets and financial processes were the root cause fo this explosion? We agree, or so it seems by your post on flame: Securitization, CDS, Dervatives and the spurious writing of subprime and novelty loans where both the vendors of the 'product', the 'innovators' of the 'product' and the purchasers of the 'product' were misprepresenting in a way that could have been halted with proper regulation

The roots of this crises are in markets and financial instruments that were immune from regulation (the same, BTW, as in 1929- but thats another story)

So pardon me if the 'pennies in the fuse box' of regulation set by those 'eeebil' democrats fails to resonate among anyone with two neurons to rub together (since, you see, we lost all of our pennies in the market).

So, in essence, the areas in which the 'Tao of the Republican' was being followed are precisely the areas that blew up. Now, did some democrats go along with the dergulation and block attempts at regulation? Sure, but don't sit there and tell me that de-regulation is a Democratic thing, and you Republicans held the line valiantly for more and better and smarter regulation (IE, the McCain proposition).

Go sell that elsewhere, as we're not buying. Because, see, we lost all of our money when the un-frikin-regulated markets melted down.

Yeti