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What Went Wrong? A Tragedy In Three Acts, John C. Coffee Jr.
What Went Wrong? A Tragedy In Three Acts, John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
I am going to tell today a simple story of greed, rationalization, and sloth; it is a tragedy in three acts. The first act involves the collapse of what I will call the Great American Housing Bubble. The second act involves the failure of the gatekeepers, in particular; what happened at those credit rating agencies that could lead them to rate everything investment-grade? In the final act, I will turn to the collapse of the investment banks, the failure of securities regulation, and where that leaves us.
Although this is a tragedy, it is not a Shakespearian tragedy because Shakespearian …