[Saracen]

I don't think he even laid the foundations for the crunch. That was the US sub-prime market, and more specifically the securitisation of sub-primes, and that is at the least, a largely US-driven issue. He did, however, set the scene for the impact that would have here via his policies, and his lack of establishing an effective monitoring and restraint mechanism governing the risk-taking motivations of greedy bankers.

In that sense, i suppose we could say that the root cause was either the US Secretary of the Treasury or the Chairman of the Fed, for lack of banking regulation in the US.

I've long said (including on this forum), for instance, that the UK housing market was heading for a "correction", and that the rates of growth we had we unsustainable. But that how big (and how long, and quite when) a correction would be down to what caused it. And that if it was a collapse in the housing market rather than a levelling off or even a small downward correction, it would come from some significant external factor. And you don't exactly need to be a visionary to have seen that. It was common sense. Common sense, however, that seems to have eluded our "prudent" ex-Chancellor.

So even I can blame Brown for the credit crunch. But you're right, he's directly and personally responsible for so much of the situation we find ourselves in when it arrived from over the pond, so he certainly laid the foundations for how it will affect us.