I believe, the underlying cause of '08 crash was short term profit mentality. Some large financial institutions knew that the financial instruments built on the

I believe, the underlying cause of '08 crash was short term profit mentality. Some large financial institutions knew that the financial instruments built on the top of sub-prime/very risky mortgages were bound to fail. So much, that some of them bet against the very instruments they sold off to investors. And there were other ones too, which predicted this successfully and made a lot of money.