"Wall Street got drunk," President Bush told a group of Republicans last week, unaware that his comments were being recorded. "It got drunk, and now it's got a hangover. The question is, how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments?" (See the video here.)

He's right about Wall Street. Speaking candidly, Bush pointed the finger at the now struggling financial giants that fueled the mortgage crisis with risky products that generated huge profits.

But Bush neglected to add that he was behind the bar, pouring the tequila shots for most of the night, and refusing to cut off the drunks before they'd reached their limits.

And this morning, Bush offered up a hangover cure for the capital markets by throwing his support behind a federal housing package that would prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at the expense of taxpayers.

A good bartender knows just what to do to make his customers belly up again.

Profitable innovation on Wall Street can only be fostered in just the right climate, and that's precisely what the administration created for it. Desperate to rebound from 9/11 and the technology bubble, economic policymakers lowered interest rates and kept them low. They wanted consumers to be able to borrow and banks to have easy access to credit.

Moreover, President Bush made homeownership a top priority from his first day in office. Can't afford a down payment? We'll pass legislation so you don't have to! Got bad credit? No worries!

It sounds like an ad from a predatory lender. It came in the form of the names like American Dream Down Payment Initiative, the Minority Homeownership Initiative, and Zero Down Payment Initiative.

It takes financial ingenuity to make sure everyone can own their own homes. Wall Street executed his plan for him with its "fancy financial instruments."

And Bush applauded it. The economy was strong, interest rates were low, and more people owned homes. And guess who took the credit? Here, a few choice excerpts as a reminder of just how much the administration enjoyed the tequila-drenched party:

October 2002, announcing the Minority Homeownership Initiative:
"Low interest rates, low inflation are very important foundations for economic growth. The idea of encouraging new homeownership and the money that will be circulated as a result of people purchasing homes will mean people are more likely to find a job in America. This project not only is good for the soul of the country, it's good for the pocketbook of the country, as well.

I'm also going to encourage the lending industry to develop a mortgage market so that this script, these vouchers, can regularly be used as a source of payment to provide more capital to lenders, who can then help more families move from rental housing into houses of their own."

State of the Union 2004:
"The pace of economic growth in the third quarter of 2003 was the fastest in nearly 20 years; new home construction, the highest in almost 20 years; homeownership rates, the highest ever. Manufacturing activity is increasing. Inflation is low. Interest rates are low. Exports are growing. Productivity is high, and jobs are on the rise."

(A month later, President Bush passed the Zero Down Payment Initiative. "To build an ownership society, we'll help even more Americans to buy homes," Bush told a group of homebuilders in 2004. "Some families are more than able to pay a mortgage but just don't have the savings to put money down." By the end of 2005, the National Association of Realtors said that more than four out of every 10 first-time homebuyers put no money down.)

An August 2007 speech in New York:
"One area that has shown particular strain is the mortgage market, especially what's known as the subprime sector of the mortgage market. This market has seen tremendous innovation in recent years, as new lending products make credit available to more people. For the most part, this has been a positive development, and the reason why is millions of families have taken out mortgages to buy their homes, and American homeownership is at a near all-time high."