no, all of them have helped, but the start of the issue started with Ragean. The issue was the deregulation he started, then the rest that followed (all of them) just aggravated the issue by deregulating even more. It made it easier and easier to give bad loans and helped drive the market prices (and like you pointed out all of them worked against the buyer with a "come on, you can afford that bigger home"). Obviously it took time for the effect and before that everything looks rosy. Joe that bought a home fore 150k and sold it for 300k felt great, the older mortgages where stable so equity backed bonds had high interest and where stable. But as Jim bought much more then he could afford and there where too many Jims that where defaulting, banks auctioned homes for less and the bonds started becoming more unstable (on the other hand as long as money comes in, like all pyramid schemes, the effects that there is no real money behind it was not felt until later)