Special report
The market meltdowns began in September 2007, but this has been a slow-motion catastrophe that started with the euphoria of financial bubbles that seemed to defy the laws of gravity by only rising.
When the markets were up, there were few naysayers.
Economist Brad Delong was one of the few reminding us that:
"Institutions and human psychology lead financial markets to bounce back and forth between exuberant greed and catatonic fear."
The housing bubble created in 2001 by a combination of low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve's Alan Greenspan, massive, predatory sub-prime lending by shadow lenders and financial institutions, and so-called market "innovation" in the form of exotic derivatives, securitization and deregulation all pushed profits in the financial services industry to new highs.
'Financial monster'
The consequences were largely ignored, as a process called financialization put more and more power in the hands of the economic architects on Wall Street.
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