"it was the crash of the US property lenders and one major US bank" - few people realise that Greenwich Capital Markets, a key player in the subprime crash, was owned by RBS, a Scottish bank deregulated by Brown (briefly the biggest bank in the world). "RBS Greenwich's CDO volumes jumped 134% in 2006, the Financial Times reported, putting the bank in the top three underwriters of CDOs based on asset-backed securities. " add this to NatWest abd ABN Amro exposure and RBS was the prime subprimer
http://money.cnn.com/...win.fortune/index.htm . Add HBOS and Barclays and Brown's deregulated banks were largely responsible for the disaster, even without provoking the Americans to deregulate. As the CNN article referenced in the link says, it is amazing that RBS staff survived the turmoil. It is even more mazing that Brown has any reputation left.