In the past month, eighty thousand Americans lost their jobs. According to CNN, since the start of this year, 232,000 Americans have had to find new places to work. Financial institutions such as Bear Stearns have collapsed, and banks throughout the world have watched in despair as the United States has veered towards recession. The brunt of the impact has fallen on the average man, for many Americans are losing their homes to foreclosures because they simply cannot pay off their loans. RealtyTrac reports that over 1.3 million American homes were foreclosed in 2007, a 75% increase from 2006.

As our economy and country have taken a turn for the worse, Americans have naturally sought to point a finger at the instigator of our current woes. The easiest target, of course, has been our president, the man who bungled the Iraq War and led our government’s debt to balloon to approximately $9 trillion. But this one’s not our president’s fault.

As easy as it is to blame our nation’s complicated problems on George Bush, doing so is simply inconsiderate of the facts that lie at the heart of the issue that will define our upcoming election. Although our president has spent unscrupulously during his eight years in office, the problem inherent in our economy lies not in our government’s spending but rather in the decisions of the banks and home buyers who have caused their own mess.

When the U.S. economy slowed down in 2000 and 2001, the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to give the U.S. economy a boost. This made procuring a loan to buy a house fairly easy, and caused the already strong housing market to grow even stronger. Because of this, however, lenders often gave money to buyers who had poor credit scores—buyers who were apt to default on their loans. These risky investments were known as sub-prime loans, as they were loans that would not have otherwise been made. According to Credit Suisse, only $138 billion of sub-prime mortgages were given in 2000; by contrast, $665 billion did in 2005.

This irresponsible lending, coupled with the many homeowners from 2000 to 2006 who bought homes far more expensive than their income could support, placed the U.S. economy in a bubble that could violently burst at any time. Homeowners were burdened with loans that would grow to be far more expensive than their homes, and lenders ran the risk of losing vast sums of money because of their improper loans. So long, however, as housing prices continued to rise as they did from 2002 to 2006, everything would be all right.

In 2006, however, when our nation’s housing bubble finally burst, lenders and loaners were both taken aback. Because their houses’ prices dropped appreciably after 2006, many homeowners decided to default on their loans, seeing little value in holding prohibitively high mortgages. When this happened, banks, investors, and other lenders who invested in these sub-prime loans lost billions of dollars, and were left with property often of less value than the amount of money that had been lent out. This caused many banks to fall into bankruptcy, and caused investors throughout the world, including Choate, to lose billions. And as the wealth of institutions throughout the world has dropped, so has the number of jobs companies in our country can provide. The job loss has caused more unemployment, more suffering, and has only exacerbated our economy’s downward spiral.

The problems we are suffering today are the result of unchecked greed on the part of both the wealthy investor and the average American. The reason our economy has failed is not President Bush, but rather America as a whole, as an irresponsibly investing society. But many Americans, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, fail to acknowledge the same, claiming that Bush—a man who doesn’t make the decisions of either banks or homebuyers—is responsible for our economic downturns.

Given the consensus on the true culprits in our economy, why would Obama and Clinton repeatedly blame our president for a problem that he didn’t create? The answer is quite simple—it wins votes for the candidates. Blaming the president for causing the economic crisis biases Americans against the Republican Party, and therefore causes fewer citizens to vote for John McCain. But blaming the president is also failing to note who the real culprits are in our current economy. If Obama, Clinton, and McCain seek to lead our country out of the impending recession, they need to stop distracting Americans from the true issue, and start helping America move forward to prevent sub-prime loans from passing through our banking system.

We can choose to ignore the years of history that have led us to these trying times. We can choose to blame President Bush for every woe that has befallen our nation. But when we do so, we ignore the problems that need to be fixed, and prevent ourselves from developing a solution that will adequately address the problems facing our nation. If we want to learn from the mistakes that have caused our current economic downfall, we should learn to invest with greater care, to take intelligent risks, and to not invest rashly. If we seek to move forward and help the millions of Americans that are losing their homes each day, it is time we stop playing political games and begin accepting that Americans—not just their president—caused their own problems, for only then can we start working to help the very same people who have nary a minute to spare.