I got my last hair cut today, before leaving for Florida Sunday. The barber and I were having a nice conversation about the economy and how it got this bad and we agreed that there is plenty of blame to go around. She even stated that her spending habits contributed to the problem.

I was pointing out the generational differences in home buying and how the younger generations got themselves into trouble buy buying over their heads, with low or no money down mortgages at rates that they could not guarantee they could pay when their ARMs went up. We older people (60 in December), our parents and grandparents, needed 10-20% down and a good job and credit to get a mortgage and never would, or could, get a loan we couldn't afford.

The shop owner jumped in in a huff saying "I suppose the poor people are to blame"? I repeated there was plenty of blame to go around and that nobody held a gun to any ones head to take out a mortgage. He jumped in with "it's the banks fault and the governments fault", as if either made any one take the mortgages.

I told him I felt that the government (us), with good intentions, in an effort to make loans available to people that would not ordinarily qualify, changed the rules to have lending institutions give loans they would not give otherwise. The lending institutes saw they could make money on these loans, above what ordinary loans return, and promoted them to the benefit of themselves.

The rules change was not specifically targeted to people with low credit ratings and everyone of every income group jumped on the bandwagon. Now the well intended manipulation of the government, into rigging the system for one group of people, has opened a Pandora's Box of foolish borrowing.

Therefore ALL are to blame. The government for trying to make the banking system "fair", the banks for giving up their sound lending practices for sheer profit and the borrowers of ALL income levels, that were foolish enough to sign for loans they couldn't pay.

The owner clammed up, the barber felt uncomfortable for siding with me and I stuck to my guns.

But, I feel that the government started the mess buy trying to interfere with the free market system. To those of you with a banking background, should the government be trying to play with the free market system in order to change the benifits of ANY group of people?