I would also encourage everyone to read the report’s executive summary as Barry recommends and links to above.

Thanks.

1) The FCIC blame numerous regulators for failing to discharge their duties:

a) Alan Greenspan for his refusal to oversee lending standards (as was his charge)
b) The SEC for exempting the 5 biggest banks from prior leverage rules;
c) John Dugan, at OTS/OCC for pre-empting state anti-predatory lending rules.

2) The report places lots of blame on the deregulation of Derivatives, and specifically names Bill Clinton (Larry Summers is implied) in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. The CFMA made Derivatives unique amongst all financial instruments in terms of reserve requirements, exchange trading, capital minimums to even be an underwriter, transparency, etc. There is no doubt that without the CFMA, AIG/FP would not have been able to so thoroughly commit suicide.

3) Everyone should read, at the very least, the report’s executive summary
Its here, http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/01/the-financial-crisis-inquiry-report/ pages 15-28.

1) The overhwelming majority of the American sheeple still have no clue what is going on with our economy and they actualy believe there was a recovery. In Austrian economics, there is no such thing as a “jobless recovery.” The American sheeple also believe the American media is always telling them the truth.
2) The treasury has an unstated intenion of purposefully devaluing the dollar. Paying Social Security benefits, gvmnt pension worker benefits, debts service payments, etc in cheaper dollars is great unless your creditors (foreign countries like Japan and China) and bond vigilantes say enough is enough and force interest rates higher.
3) The dollar’s status as world’s reserve currency. When you own the world’s reserve currency and you are still considered the world’s best military, you can run the printing presses for a long time and no one is going to do anything about it.
4) The government deficit spending and creating inflation is the easiest and best way for a government to tax its people. Even Keynes said so. Inflaiton is often called the “invisible tax.” Wealth is not being destroyed. It is merely being transferred from most private US citizens to our gvmnt in the form of loss of purchasing power from private citizens. Please take a look at my new company. We have a Facebook fanpage up. We’re Wall St for Main St and we’d welcome you into our dicussions!
Thanks,
Jason