Causes of the crisis

I ran across two good articles this morning explaining the recent financial crises and giving some limited prescriptions on what to do about it.

James Surowiecki has a good article in the New Yorker covering the debt bias in our tax system, and the problems that make it very difficult for a political system to fix that problem.

Roger Lowenstein has a good opinion piece on Bloomberg in which he identifies six big systemic risks that the financial crisis uncovered.  These are all secondary problems--absent regulations that should have limited the extent of the damage--as opposed to the primary causes of the financial crisis.

Hat tip: Barry Ritholtz at the Big Picture, as usual.  Good stuff Barry!  Thanks.