Narratives of the Global Financial Crisis

Abstract

The final report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States (Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, or FCIC) was published in January 2011. Based on several hundred public hearings and interviews and millions of pages of emails and other documents, the commission staff examined, with particular emphasis on the role of complex derivatives and the US mortgage market, the causes of the financial crisis. It also explored why certain financial institutions had failed or might have failed without government support.