I strongly disagree. > It was the handful of very greedy politicians that relaxed the laws that allowed this to happen This breaks down for two reasons. First

I strongly disagree. > It was the handful of very greedy politicians that relaxed the laws that allowed this to happen This breaks down for two reasons. First, politicians relaxed the laws because they were bribed into it by lobbies. That's at least two handfuls of money-driven people at play here. > "ordinary" traders, quants and managers at big banks had essentially nothing to do with the direction in which the world was headed, they were only there for the execution. That's people who convinced poor and poorly-educated people to buy houses they couldn't afford. They tampered the accounting books. They outright lied to get more sales, and so on and so forth. I don't know about you, but I would need to be extremely desperate (as in I can't feed my children) to resort to those tactics in exchange for money. These people were not in great need, and acted in that manner just because they are more money-driven than others who didn't (many of which lost their jobs because of it). So yes, I honestly think that it was the fault of money-driven people in general from the very top to the street seller.