You have to give them credit: it didn’t take too many all-nighters for the Neoliberal Thought Collective to come up with what would become the single most popular story on the right in America, wrapping the entire crisis up in a neat tidy package. In this meme, the crisis was first and foremost a housing bubble, which, when it burst, had some other unpleasant side effects; loans were extended to a bunch of deadbeats who should never been given a shot at home ownership in the first place; the reason that happened was the ill-conceived Community Reinvestment Act passed by the Democrats in 1977; and then the mortgage loans to the deadbeats were enabled by the Government Sponsored Entities (GSEs) Fannie Mae (actually: Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation). Hence, on both the demand and supply sides, the government had polluted the mortgage market, first causing the housing bubble, and then the subsequent collapse. It was all the fault of the government. Full stop.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 876