@moonman One other key part of the housing collapse is that after the "dot bomb" recession near the end of Clinton's term, job-related income growth was pretty much nil. So people who owned homes used refinancing and 2nd mortgages to extract funds that enabled them to continue living as though times were good. This was the major source of the boom times during Bush Jr's term (up until it all fell apart).

Turning a crank and out comes another billion dollars in GDP + tax revenue made bankers very influential, and made everyone (White House, Congress, federal and state regulators) turn a blind eye until it was too late.