I blame a combination of things.
First, I have to blame the bizarre economic pseudoscience that became popular around the time I was born. Deregulation is not a magic wand, it's something that should only happen when the market can sustain itself. Only an idiot would think that the banking and lending industries could function without any regulation.
I suppose next I have to blame the education system for buying in to this nonsense. Why is it so difficult to teach economics without praying at the altar of Ayn Rand or Mises?
I don't know if I'd say greed is to blame, but perhaps a system that glorifies greed overtly should be blamed. Accumulation of wealth should be tempered with ethics and an understanding that our species hasn't survived for hundreds of thousands of years by competing with ourselves but by cooperating. Competition means an adversarial system, and in an adversarial system, someone loses.
I blame Congress for not doing their damned jobs, again. They were so scared about the fragile housing bubble that they didn't do their job. And they should be fired.
Also these:
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Originally Posted by tisonlyi
The entire economic model.
Houses are not investments.
Money as debt, rather than value.
Fantasyland faith in efficient markets.
The systematic dismantling and shipping overseas of the value-creating elements of an economy. (Hint: Industry/Manufacturing)
Finance as end to itself.
Tainted economic figures. (Inflation figures that measure nothing of tangible worth, for example)
Corrupt politics, based on a fantasy.
Redistribution of wealth in the wrong direction.
Destruction of value on the altar of consumption.
Exponential growth rates being acceptable, necessary and encouraged.
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QFT. Damn well said.