Link to 576-page Final Report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission

Here's a link to the 576-page pdf Final Report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission:

http://c0182732.cdn1.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/fcic_final_report_full.pdf

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has been called upon to examine the financial

and economic crisis that has gripped our country and explain its causes to the

American people. We are keenly aware of the significance of our charge, given the

economic damage that America has suffered in the wake of the greatest financial crisis

since the Great Depression.

Our task was first to determine what happened and how it happened so that we

could understand why it happened. Here we present our conclusions. We encourage

the American people to join us in making their own assessments based on the evidence

gathered in our inquiry. If we do not learn from history, we are unlikely to fully

recover from it. Some on Wall Street and in Washington with a stake in the status quo

may be tempted to wipe from memory the events of this crisis, or to suggest that no

one could have foreseen or prevented them. This report endeavors to expose the

facts, identify responsibility, unravel myths, and help us understand how the crisis

could have been avoided. It is an attempt to record history, not to rewrite it, nor allow

it to be rewritten.

To help our fellow citizens better understand this crisis and its causes, we also present

specific conclusions at the end of chapters in Parts III, IV, and V of this report.

The subject of this report is of no small consequence to this nation. The profound

events of  and  were neither bumps in the road nor an accentuated dip in

the financial and business cycles we have come to expect in a free market economic

system. This was a fundamental disruption—a financial upheaval, if you will—that

wreaked havoc in communities and neighborhoods across this country.

As this report goes to print, there are more than  million Americans who are

out of work, cannot find full-time work, or have given up looking for work. About

four million families have lost their homes to foreclosure and another four and a half

million have slipped into the foreclosure process or are seriously behind on their

mortgage payments. Nearly trillion in household wealth has vanished, with retirement

accounts and life savings swept away. Businesses, large and small, have felt

the sting of a deep recession. There is much anger about what has transpired, and justifiably

so. Many people who abided by all the rules now find themselves out of work

and uncertain about their future prospects. The collateral damage of this crisis has

been real people and real communities. The impacts of this crisis are likely to be felt

for a generation. And the nation faces no easy path to renewed economic strength.

Like so many Americans, we began our exploration with our own views and some

preliminary knowledge about how the world’s strongest financial system came to the

brink of collapse. Even at the time of our appointment to this independent panel,

much had already been written and said about the crisis. Yet all of us have been

deeply affected by what we have learned in the course of our inquiry. We have been at

various times fascinated, surprised, and even shocked by what we saw, heard, and

read. Ours has been a journey of revelation.