United States Senate
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Carl Levin, Chairmain
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WALL STREET AND
THE FINANCIAL CRISIS:
Anatomy of a Financial Collapse
MAJORITY AND MINORITY
PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE
UNITED STATES SENATE
STAFF REPORT
ON INVESTIGATIONS
APRIL 13, 2011
Chairman
SENATOR TONM COBURN, M.D.
Ranking Minority Member
PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS
ELISE J. BEAN
Staff Director and Chief Counsel
ROBERT L. ROACH
Counsel and Chief Investigator
LAURA E. STUBER
Counsel
ZACHARY I. SCHRAM
Counsel
DANIEL J. GOSHORN
Counsel
DAVID H. KATZ
Counsel
ALLISON F. MURPHY
Counsel
ADAM C. HENDERSON
Professionnal Staff Member
PAULINE E. CALANDE
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MICHAEL J. MARTINEAU
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CHRISTOPHER J. BARKLEY
Staff Director to the Minority
ANTHONY G. COTTO
Counsel to the Minority
KEITH B. ASHDOWN
Chief Investigator to the Minority
JUSTIN J. ROOD
Senior Investigator to the Minority
VANESSA CAREIRO
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HELENA MAN
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MARY D. ROBERTSON
Chief Clerk
In the fall of 2008, America suffered a devastating economic collapse. Once valuable securities lost most or all of their value, debt markets froze, stock markets plunged, and storied financial firms went under. Millions of Americans lost their jobs; millions of families lost their homes; and good businesses shut down. These events cast the United States into an economic recession so deep that the country has yet to fully recover.
This Report is the product of a two-year, bipartisan investigation by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations into the origins of the 2008 financial crisis. The goals of this investigation were to construct a public record of the facts in order to deepen the understanding of what happened; identify some of the root causes of the crisis; and provide a factual foundation for the ongoing effort to fortify the country against the recurrence of a similar crisis in the future.
Using internal documents, communications, and interviews, the Report attempts to provide the clearest picture yet of what took place inside the walls of some of the financial institutions and regulatory agencies that contributed to the crisis. The investigation found that the crisis was not a natural disaster, but the result of high risk, complex financial products; undisclosed conflicts of interest; and the failure of regulators, the credit rating agencies, and the market itself to rein in the excesses of Wall Street.
While this Report does not attempt to examine every key moment, or analyze every important cause of the crisis, it provides new, detailed, and compelling evidence of what happened. In so doing, we hope the Report leads to solutions that prevent it from happening again.
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