Who or what caused this financial crisis?

Investors and readers are no doubt aware of the benefits of the free enterprise system as practiced in the United States: entrepreneurship, innovation, ingenuity, dynamism, risk taking, wealth building, and commerce are chief among these benefits.

But readers also know that corporate capitalism has its drawbacks, including (but not exclusively) financial crises that have resulted in devastating economic and social upheavals.

1893, 1929, 1987, 20??

Moreover, despite technological change, productivity increases, and massive increases in wealth, it's remarkable how similar both the crises and the public policy responses have been over the hundred-plus year period: excesses occur, bad debts mount, some regulatory changes are implemented by the U.S. Government (and sometimes by state governments), and then corporate capitalism resumes.

Further, whether it's due to America's culture, its vast natural resources, something innate in Americans, human nature in general, or some other factor, or a combination, every time a crisis occurs, the American people, by and large, reach the same conclusion regarding what caused the crisis or problem: bad decisions or incorrect decisions. Basically, that people, mainly executives and other business leaders (sometimes federal/state regulators), made mistakes or bad decisions.

But we're in the globalization era now, with a myriad of changes, hence there's no guarantee that the changes the American people favored, say, 20 years or 80 years ago, will be the changes they support now.

In the months and quarters ahead, federal officials, and others, will be weighing a series of reforms, but keep in mind they're not likely to implement changes the public does not support, so it makes sense to find out what investors and readers think.

In your view, what caused the current financial crisis? Was it:

a) Bad decisions/mistakes
b) Bad/incompetent executives
c) Flawed economic system -- the economic system needs to be fixed.
d) A combination
e) None of the above/something else.
Courtesy: http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/09/18/who-or-what-caused-this-financial-crisis/