Bush didn't create the conditions that led to the crash; he inherited them from Bill Clinton, and a large cast of thousands all played their own parts. Republican policies had no role in the crash; and the Democrats' policies would have had no role, either. This was not a case of free markets run wild; it was a case of government policy distorting the markets by removing their built-in restraints. -Noemie Emery

This was the economy that President Clinton handed to President Bush in January of 2001. It was an economy that was being carried by an unsustainable bubble that, in fact, already was in the process of deflating at the time Bush took office. The S&P 500 was more than 10 percent below its 2000 peak and the NASDAQ was down by more than 40 percent on the day that Bush took office. This pretty much guaranteed the recession that began in March of 2001 just as the collapse of the housing bubble placed President Obama in the middle of terrible recession in January of 2009. -Dean Baker, Huffington Post