Financial crisis commission blames Wall Street

Who or what was responsible for the worst economic crisis since the 1920s? And could it have been prevented? That is what the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission set to find out when they interviewed over 700 people. Today they release their 576 page report. Michael Hudson, reporter for the Center for Public Integrity and the author of “The Monster: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America and Spawned a Global Crisis” says Wall Street greed and lack of government regulation were the biggest causes for the crisis.

In fact, housing lenders, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were not the main culprits in the crisis. Hudson explains that the evidence is overwhelming that loans bankrolled by Wall Street were much more likely to go into serious delinquency than those issued by Fannie and Freddie. “Although they did a lot of damage to homeowners and tax payers, they weren’t the ones who created the mess, they jumped in late in the game and made it worse,” says Hudson.