Congress was complicit in the problems that are causing so much trouble for wall street. Given that bad loans are the foundation on which most of the gains over the last 15 years were built, and the bad loans were encouraged by congress and the "community organizers", I don't think it's unreasonable to put a lot of the blame on washington. We don't have a free market, so it's hard to blame free markets on the problems we're having. In free markets, companies fail, and the market deals. In free markets, people with poor credit don't get loans. People without income don't get loans. The solution isn't 1.7 trillion dollars in pork.