[cia_plant]

Yeah, I don't think it's exactly wrong to say that greed and stupidity caused the crisis, but it seems like a category error. If a farmer kept planting crops in September, and they died during the winter, and he said that they died because it got cold, then he'd be perfectly correct. But that way of phrasing it almost suggests that he expects it not to get cold again next year.

I think it's very hard for people to see bubbles as forces of nature, because in retrospect you can always see how dumb they were. So it always seems as though, if we just rationalize the system a bit, then we'll no longer have bubbles. However, no system has yet been invented which is capable of preserving rationality within a modern economic system. Hundreds of years of evidence suggest that whatever reforms are attempted as a result of this crisis will eventually run into the same mishaps and errors as ever before, unless someone comes up with a truly systematic account of bubbles.

You're right that I shouldn't assume that this crisis is an expression of cyclical booms and busts. I'm very puzzled by this crisis, and the information that's available is maddeningly vague and handwaving.