a further quote in the article.
As George Akerlof and I argue in our recent book Animal Spirits, the current financial crisis was driven by speculative bubbles in the housing market, the stock market, and energy and other commodities markets. Bubbles are caused by feedback loops: rising speculative prices encourage optimism, which encourages more buying, and hence further speculative price increases – until the crash comes.
Note again, nothing about causes outside the financial sector, such as the desire of money to cut costs inorder to maximize profits and in doing so to cut jobs, welfaare, higher level taxes, and push costs of society on to poorer people..
via Economist’s View.