The recession began while Bush was in office, but was grown from the seeds planted by Clinton and the Republican Congress that repealed the Glass-Steagal Act of 1933 that allowed banks to become investment centers. They immediately set about the business of building the toxic mortgage market, and breaking them up into the derivative mess we have now. It took about 10 years for those seeds to blossom. What brought it to a head was the sudden increase in fuel prices that began pushing people over the edge at the same time adjustable rate mortgages began resetting. People were suddenly finding themselves paying double to triple for fuel costs, paying an additional 30 percent for groceries, AND then their mortgages were increasing to the tune of 40 percent. Because costs went up, people quit buying so much because they were flat broke. Customer loss caused businesses to start laying people off, which made things worse. Now people who had seen their net outlay double while seeing no increase in pay were suddenly without the pay. All this resulted in what we have today. Excessive greed by bankers and oil speculators combined to drag this nation to its knees.
Two simple fixes that would go a long ways towards recovery would be to get fuel prices back down, and reinstate the Glass-Steagal Act of 1933. This would return the banking industry to the slow and steady entity that allowed us to be a financial powerhouse at the expense of excessive banking profits, and low fuel prices would allow people to be able to do what needs to be done. If people retain their current mindset that thrift and savings are more important than conspicuous consumption, within 5 years we'd be back on top.
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