Being blamed are sub-prime mortgages, which are mortgages granted to people with a less-than-perfect credit rating.  Because the borrower is consider less than perfect, she/he is charged higher interest rates than those with more desirable credit. 

In their pursuit of profits, corporations seek to reduce costs.  There are three places that costs can be reduced; technology, materials and labor. 

Raw materials. How raw materials are secured is a geopolitical question that directly impacts the costs of production.  Corporations obtain raw materials cheaply by taking them to war.  The military, who protects the interests of the ruling class, defeats nations with desired raw materials and then sets the terms of the sale of these materials worldwide, including their market value and beneficiaries of profits from sales  The residual impact of the war breaks down the economy of the defeated, destroys its production capacity, and prevents it from developing the capacity to compete against the defeaters.  

Labor.  Labor costs are reduced by laying off workers, cutting wages and benefits, and locating production in places with cheaper labor.  The quickest savings are in the area of imposing stringent give-backs, such as retirement cuts, pension cuts, health care cuts, vacation cuts, and setting up part-time/part-year contractual relationships instead of filling full-time positions. 

The savings made in these areas are then invested in labor-replacing technology, i.e., computer roboticized machines with engineers monitoring them.  This allows them to produce a commodity (cars, shoes, computer, iPod, printer, etc.) without paying a salary, health care benefit, a pension, a vacation, or  sick leave. 

Technology. Corporations reduce costs by applying technological innovations to the process of production.  Technology increases productivity, eliminates redundancy, improves efficiency and makes overall production cheaper.

The reduction of labor costs is functional in an economy as long as people are employed in other industries. But the economy is finite; there are only so many people with jobs and money.  The same type of technology that is used in agriculture is also applied in manufacturing, mining, service, transportation, etc. Given that the capitalists are in competition, each has to upgrade its technology to compete.  In time, the overall pool of people with the capacity to purchase goods and services shrinks and the productive capacity of roboticized technology outweighs the purchasing power of the working mass.  As a result, markets shrink.

A market is a population with money who have a need.  The market shrinks when the technology is imposed on people who make up the market and commodities are saturated. There is an inverse relationship between the use of technology for productivity and the dismissing of workers because they cannot produce on a level that the technology can do.  The lower the need for workers, the lower their ability to be a part of the market.  When workers cannot purchase the commodities produced by the robots, they cannot purchase the necessities of life and overall living standards decrease.  Furthermore the profitability of corporations is lowered.

The bottom line is that without jobs, people simply cannot pay mortgages.  People should not feel bad about it...you are not slipping through the cracks.  The ruling class made the crack and is sweeping workers into it.  Their intent is to maximize profits at all costs.  When you are of no use to them as a population of profitable workers, they'll treat you just like Hitler and the Nazis in Germany treated the Jews.