http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2008/10/equities_pay_ca.html
最后几段：
I believe that the basic causes of the crisis were six factors internal to the market system. The first was abundant and therefore cheap global capital--the result of private economic activity--and, consequently, low interest rates, which encouraged borrowing. The second factor was a housing bubble caused in part by those low interest rates and in part by aggressive marketing of mortgages. The third was new financial instruments that businessmen believed reduced borrowing risks and so increased optimal leverage. The fourth was the difficulty of "selling" a conservative business strategy to shareholders in a bubble environment. Borrowing more and more at low interest rates while home or other asset values are rising enables financial institutions to make higher profits, and a firm that refuses to jump on the bandwagon will as a result experience lower profits and will have difficulty convincing shareholders that they really are better off because the higher profits of the competing firms are unsustainable.
我相信这场危机的最根本原因是6个市场体制内生的因素。一，全球私有
经济的活跃使全球资本供给充足且廉价，这导致了低利率，从而鼓励了借贷。二、由低利率及抵押贷款的过分买卖导致的房地产泡沫。三，新的
金融工具使商人相信能减少借款风险，因而将最佳的杠杆水平提高。四，在一个泡沫市场，要让股东接受保守的商业战略是很困难的。当房产和其它资产价格不断上涨时，
金融机构以低利率借款越多就赚得越多，如果哪个企业拒绝赶这浪头就会降低收益。竞争对手的高利润是不可持续的，这个的理由很难说服股东相信他们的状况才是更好的。
The fifth factor was sheer uncertainty--was it a bubble? If so, when would it end? Would the new financial instruments assure a safe landing if it was a bubble and it burst? And the sixth factor was that the downside risk to highly leveraged financial institutions was truncated by generous severance provisions for their executives, authorized by boards of directors that were not effective monitors of executive decisions.
五，完全的不确定性，这是泡沫吗？它什么时候结束？如果是泡沫，新的金融工具能使它破灭时安全着陆吗？六，由于慷慨的“隔离”条款，使得那些高杠杆比率的公司面临的风险与其管理层利益相分离，董事会授权这种对管理层决策的监督办法不是很有效。
Cycles of boom and bust are intrinsic to capitalism. Government can make them more serious, and sometimes less serious, but if you take away government you will still have periodic economic crises.
周期性的繁荣与萧条是资本主义的内生物。政府可以使之更严重，有时候也能减轻。但即使没有政府，你还是得经历周期性的
经济危机。
