It's easy, convenient, a good story line, etc. to blame the Great Recession on a-hole investment bankers trying make a quick buck, or stupid home buyers who should have known better than to buy a $500,000 house on $45,000 a year in income, but it's also wrong.  As with most things in life it's complicated, and hopefully we'll start seeing more in-depth explanations for the financial meltdown as we move out of crisis mode and into recovery/finger-pointing mode.

I might have found a good place to start in today's Wall Street Journal.  Columnist David Wessel profiles the University of Chicago's Raghuram Rajan who has an upcoming book (July publication date) titled "Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy."  Based on the quotes that Wessel provides from his interview of Rajan it sounds like the book will look at the crisis from a big-picture angle, and while the usual suspects are identified as key players in the crisis they are also seen as role players and not arch villains.  I think that's an important distinction if we're going to learn anything from this crisis and fix whatever we need to fix if we're not going to completely torch the economy.

Anyway, here's my favorite quote from the column:

 "When easy money pushed by a deep pocketed government comes into contact with the profit motive of a sophisticated, amoral financial sector, a deep fault line develops," Mr. Rajan writes.