“Most financial crises are caused by a mix of stupidity and greed and recklessness and risk-taking and hope….You can’t legislate away stupidity and risk-taking and greed and recklessness. What you can do is make sure when it happens it does not cause too much damage and to do that you have to make sure you have good rules against fraud and abuse, better protections and you force banks to hold more capital against their risk.”-Timothy Geithner, U.S. Treasury Secretary, statement made after touring a factory in Portland

Realize that Geithner is talking about the political and corporate leadership of the United States.  He’s also saying, in a ’round about way, that he has been trying his best to make sure the incompetent decisions by our leaders “…does not cause too much damage…”

Those leaders include both Republican Bush Jr and Democrat Obama!