"The legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton", granted it’s from a Wikipedia article. But the act was signed into law in 1999 passing the Senate 90-8 (52-1 R, 38-7 D) House 362-57 (207-5 R, 155-51 D). So to assign it to one party is ridiculous, it was to change depression area policy. Why blame the law, which passed with a ~85% in both chambers. I am fairly familiar with GLBA, SOX, Dodd-Frank, and PCI compliance. Working for one of the big evil banks, I dealt with these on a daily basis until I moved out of the controllers group.

Where is personal responsibility? The banks and lenders followed the rules. Society as a whole is failing at accepting their own f ups. You sign the note, just like a car loan, a credit application, and student loans. If you don’t understand, the terms rates, other mechanics then you have no one to blame but yourself. The truth in lending act should cover this, as it one of the things you sign. The fact is groups of people purchased homes they couldn’t afford, or got into a bad product. Heck we bought our house on a NINA(no income no assets), we refinanced after a year. It got us in the house and I knew exactly what we signed, it was an arm, which in retrospect would have been better as we would have a rate around 4% today.