2008 Financial Crisis Avoidable

Financial Crisis Was Avoidable, Inquiry Finds

To read full New York Times Article click "Financial Crisis Was" above. See quote below.

WASHINGTON — The 2008 financial crisis was an “avoidable” disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street, according to the conclusions of a federal inquiry.

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The commission that investigated the crisis casts a wide net of blame, faulting two administrations, the Federal Reserve and other regulators for permitting a calamitous concoction: shoddy mortgage lending, the excessive packaging and sale of loans to investors and risky bets on securities backed by the loans.
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Most people who understand financial regulation and who watched most useful financial regulation get knocked down in the 1980s, 90s, and 2000s realized that we were in for it eventually because of the "knocking down" of most of the useful financial regulation that came out of "The Great Depression".

I personally think blaming Greenspan and Bernanke isn't very useful. I don't think any one person was prescient enough except those who understood financial deregulation was sort of like outlawing seat belts, outlawing windshields and outlawing doors and crash air bags in all vehicles. Since this is what was done in the financial world between the Reagan Administration and the Bush Administration, fatalities and injuries of all kinds could be the only actual result in both the short and long run.