If you talk to Democrats these days, they'll tell you that the economic meltdown is all the fault of George W. Bush and the GOP. Republicans, understandably, have a different story, blaming the disaster largely on bad home loans made by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both beloved of Democratic politicians.

Hey, it's an election year, what do you expect?

Even so, it would be wrong to let campaign rancor obscure a truth voters should face squarely: The fiscal calamity now rocking the nation was brought upon us by both parties.

Consider these three landmarks on the primrose path to quagmire:

In the spring of 1998, a leading government financial regulator named Brooksley Born informed Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt that the booming but unregulated market in credit derivatives posed a major threat to the financial system.

According to the New York Times, Greenspan and Rubin pushed back hard against her watchdog proposal, later joining Levitt in lobbying Congress to ignore Born's advice. Congress then effectively stripped Born's agency of its regulatory power.

In 2000, the Commodities Futures Modernization Act expressly forbade the government from regulating credit-default swaps, a risky form of private insurance. At the last minute, Republican Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas attached the legislation co-sponsored by two Democratic senators to a giant appropriations bill. It passed 95-0, and President Bill Clinton signed it into law.

Absent government oversight, the credit-default-swap market ballooned and was estimated to be worth $40 billion to $62 billion before its ongoing collapse, which would have taken down the giant insurer AIG if not for a U.S. government bailout.

In April 2004, the five members of the SEC met to consider a request by the big five Wall Street investment banks to repeal a rule limiting the amount of debt their brokerage departments could assume. Under the rules, the banks had to have $1 in cash for every $12 of debt. The requested rule change would have exempted the power quintet from the rule.

All five commissioners — three Republicans and two Democrats — agreed to the rule change. And the Wall Street thoroughbreds were off to the races. Bear Stearns, for example, assumed $33 in debt for every dollar it held in assets. As we know, it all came crashing down this year.

Wall Street lobbying cash, plus what investor George Soros recently called the quasi-religion of "market fundamentalism," found eager takers on both sides of the aisle for two decades. It's not a politically useful or emotionally satisfying conclusion for Democrats or Republicans, but it can't be denied that this economic debacle is a bipartisan achievement.