For decades, the accepted academic response to concerns that the economy might be on an unsustainable trajectory was that financial markets knew best. Got a backup? Markets are spectacularly efficient processors of information and opinion. But they also have a tendency (by now well documented) to overshoot on both the upside and the downside.
The Financial Crisis Blame Game
Who and what got us into this financial mess? Here's my far-from-exhaustive list of the guilty
Justin Fox