While few predicted the financial catastrophe, almost everyone has an explanation as to why it happened. To economists, it all seems painfully simple. Too much foreign money was flowing into the US from the Asian countries especially China. The availability of easy credit meant that too many people borrowed to buy properties that they could not afford. The bankers bundled up these loans and sold them to investors that could not understand the complexity of these bundles and the risks inherent in them. Once US borrowers started defaulting on their mortgages, they lost their houses and investors all around the world, including banks and hedge funds, lost their investments. For the critics of Bush administration, the government failed to regulate the activities of the banking behemoths. For the Fed critics, the crisis resulted from Alan Greenspan’s policy of keeping the interest rates low for an extended period of time. Given the ongoing nature of the crisis, many complicated explanations will surface in the years to come. Yet the root of the economic depression might very well lie in one fundamental human instinct: greed.

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