Originally Posted by Paul Waters

Canada has a fractional reserve banking system, as do all G7 countries. Modern banking depends on it. Banking from WW II onward has depended on it. Without, we would have never seen the economic growth that we did.

The problem was that Greenspan did not oversee the banks properly, and the MBA's came up with Ponzi schemes like ABCP.

Further Greenspan kept interest rates too low, allowed money supply to grow too quickly, and taxes were too low.

In a booming economy, the Bush government had no business running deficits. Bush inherited a pretty good fiscal situation from Clinton, then fucked it up as fast as he could.