Blame The Government For The Financial Crisis

A federal inquiry has concluded that the 2008 financial crisis was an "avoidable" disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and excessive risk-taking by Wall Street, according to the New York Times.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission accuses several financial organizations of greed and ineptitude but some of its most scathing remarks are targeted at the government, with both parties blamed for the crisis.

The 576-page report will be released on Thursday. For those of you who are debating whether to take the plunge and read it, you might be swayed by the fact that it seems eminently more readable than the 848-page legalese of the Dodd-Frank Act.

The Times notes that the report was heavily shaped by the commission's chairman, Phil Angelides, and is dotted with literary flourishes.

Here is a taste:

The report calls credit-rating agencies "cogs in the wheel of financial destruction." Paraphrasing Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," it states, "The fault lies not in the stars, but in us."

Of the banks that bought, created, packaged and sold trillions of dollars in mortgage-related securities, it notes: "Like Icarus, they never feared flying ever closer to the sun."