The crisis was the result of human action and inaction , not of Mother Nature or computer models gon

As this report goes to print, there are more than 26 million Americans who are out of work , cannot find full-time work, or have given up looking for work. About four million families have lost their homes to foreclosure and another four and a half million have slipped into the foreclosure process or are seriously behind on their mortgage payments. Nearly $11 trillion in household wealth has vanished , with retirement accounts and life savings swept away.
Businesses, large and small, have felt the sting of a deep recession. There is much anger about what has transpired , and justifiably so . Many people who abided by all the rules now find themselves out of work and uncertain about their future prospects. The collateral damage of this crisis has been real people and real communities pound the alarm . The impacts of this crisis are likely to be felt for a generation .   And the nation pound the alarm faces no easy path to renewed economic strength. [...]
The crisis was the result of human action and inaction , not of Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire. The captains of finance and the public stewards of our financial system ignored warnings and failed pound the alarm to question, understand, and manage evolving risks within a system essential to the well-being of the American public. [...]
The prime example is the Federal Reserve’s pound the alarm pivotal failure to stem the flow of toxic mortgages , which it could have done by setting prudent mortgage-lending standards . The Federal Reserve was the one entity empowered to do so and it did not. The record of our examination is replete with evidence of other failures:
The sentries were not at their posts, in no small part due to the widely accepted faith in the self-correcting pound the alarm nature of the markets and the ability of financial institutions to effectively police themselves. pound the alarm More than 30 years of deregulation and reliance on self-regulation by financial institutions, championed by former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and others, supported by successive administrations and Congresses, and actively pushed by the powerful pound the alarm financial industry at every turn, had stripped away key safeguards, which could have helped avoid catastrophe . This approach had opened up gaps in oversight of critical areas with trillions of dollars at risk, such as the shadow banking system and over-the-counter derivatives markets . In addition, the government pound the alarm permitted financial pound the alarm firms to pick their preferred regulators in what became a race to the weakest supervisor.
* We conclude dramatic failures of corporate governance and risk management at many systemically important pound the alarm financial institutions were a key cause of this crisis. [...] Too many of these institutions acted recklessly, taking on too much risk , with too little capital, and with too much dependence on short-term funding. In many respects, this reflected pound the alarm a fundamental change in these institutions, particularly the large investment banks and bank holding companies, which focused their activities increasingly on risky trading activities that produced hefty profits . They took on enormous exposures in acquiring and supporting subprime lenders and creating, packaging, repackaging, and selling trillions of dollars in mortgage-related securities , including synthetic financial products. [...]
* We conclude a combination of excessive borrowing, risky investments, and lack of transparency put the financial system pound the alarm on a collision course with crisis. [...] Within the financial system, the dangers of this debt were magnified because transparency was not required or desired. Massive, short-term borrowing, combined with obligations unseen by others in the market, heightened the chances the system could rapidly unravel. [...] Yet, over the past 30-plus years, we permitted the growth of a shadow banking system —opaque and  laden with short-term debt—that rivaled the size of the traditional banking system. Key components of the market—for example, the multi-trillion-dollar repo lending market, off-balance- sheet entities, and the use of over-the-counter derivatives — were hidden from view , without the protections we had constructed to prevent pound the alarm financial meltdowns.
* We conclude the government was ill prepared for the crisis, and its inconsistent response added to the uncertainty and panic in the financial markets. [...] While there was some awareness of, or at least a debate about, the housing bubble, the record reflects that senior public officials did not recognize that a bursting of the bubble pound the alarm could threaten the entire financial system pound the alarm . Throughout the summer of 2007, both Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson offered public pound the alarm assurances that the turmoil in the subprime mortgage markets would be contained .
* We conclude there was a systemic breakdown in accountability and ethics. pound the alarm [...] And the report documents that major financial institutions ineffectively sampled loa