Just to correct things, Bush didn't start the financial pickle. It was building for a long time. Clinton's whole economic plan depended on the housing bubble letting him grow out of the increased spending and his reenergization of the Community Reinvestment Act spurred along the bad loans. Gingrich went along with it because it played into the fiction of them balancing the budget. I never understood why Greenspan didn't point to his report in the late 1990s decrying irrational exuberance in the financial markets as a defense when people blamed him for the final (but inevitable) crash when the bubble burst.

I blame Bush for a lot (especially the stupid expansion of Daylight Savings Time to please the outdoor grill industry!) but all he did was try to hang on so they could fix things slowly without creating a panic. I would have preferred they accepted the panic for the first couple of years of his presidency in order to spotlight and fix the market but remember he was dealing with PRC provocatism (remember the EP-3 being forced down at Hainan Island just 3 months after he took over), Democrats doing anything could to undermine his administration, and then 9-11.

The corrupt private/public partnership you and Skip rightfully object to has more to do with Goldman-Sachs than any of the politicians themselves and one of the few good arguments for Trump in my mind is that he'd be able to tell Goldman-Sachs to go to hell and pull in economic advisers from other sources.