The Crash of 2008 is often blamed on the Fed’s overly ‘loose’ monetary policy after 2001 (see Taylor, 2009, 2010). In short, the argument goes, American monetary policy was too ‘loose’ for four years between 2002 and 2006; and too ‘tight’ once the Fed realised that it was presiding...

This contribution attempts to explain the recent financial crisis and the subsequent Great Recession from the point of view of incentives that change as a consequence of securitization and contagion processes. It provides a critical analysis of the basic principles of the Asymmetric Information...