The financial crisis was caused by government regulations forcing lenders to make home loans to people who could never have afforded the loans without the regs.

I suspect Obama is making the decisions though because the decisions being made are the sort one makes when they lack experience and good judgment.So, if I understand it right the high employment, Katrina, the gulf oil spill, the bad portion of the Iraq war, financial credit crisis, the housing crisis these are all Bush's fault.

Another point, the crisis didn't happen because of debt.

The only reason we even touched the 401k was this was during the housing crisis and banks were requiring 20% down which we were not expecting.

My opinion is gold is for security in crisis only and should be a very small part of your portfolio if you already have it, but I wouldn't buy it at these levels. 

I'm not saying there aren't any deals left in the area, in fact I'm closing on a house there Monday, but it is harder and takes more legwork and expertise to get a deal now than it did just a few years ago.Stockton on the other hand was hit much harder by the housing crisis and is still recovering.  

I saw the good economy right before the downturn and the subsequent Bank crisis in the midst of that.  

Any increase in interest will will cause our government debt bubble to reach a crisis level.

You can't ignore national defense altogether, or the economy, or anything else, you have to manage and oversee them all.If your government can't deal with the financial crisis or any other area, then they are incompetent and need to be replaced.

Having said that, we as a country are in no position to deal with a major banking crisis at this point in time.