The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission released its report today.  It was not a surprise.

The bottom line: the financial catastrophe was not an act of God but an act of greed by Wall Streett and failure by the government to regulate..... the worst "economic crash" in 80 years.  And it was avoidable but the warning signs were all ignored.

From Greg Gordon and Kevin G. Hall at McClatchy Newspapers: "Wall Street's plunge into the U.S. housing market reached such a level of madness that three giant banks kept buying billions of dollars in risky mortgage securities when most investors were shunning them, a congressional commission said Thursday in its long-awaited report on the causes of the U.S. financial crisis.

"The first full-scale analysis of the factors that led to the worst economic crash in 80 years, the report chronicles subprime mortgage lenders' issuance of "liars' loans" to millions of unqualified borrowers, how Wall Street repackaged them into exotic securities and how ratings agencies stamped them with phony Triple A ratings.

"Federal regulatory agencies failed to police the runaway market, topped by the Federal Reserve Board's "pivotal failure" to regulate subprime mortgage lenders' issuance of a flood of mortgages to marginal homebuyers, the panel found. It said that key policymakers lacked a full understanding of the financial system they oversaw and that, at the height of the crisis, federal officials pressed the huge, government-sponsored mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to take on more risk, heightening taxpayer losses when they collapsed.

" 'There were warning signs. The greatest tragedy would be to accept the refrain that no one could have seen this coming and thus nothing could have been done,' said Phil Angelides, the commission's chair. " 'If we accept this notion, it will happen again'."

Progressive economists and others issued continuous warnings, but avaricious Clintonies and Bushites deliberately ignored them, and then the Bush and Obama administrations added insult to public injury by bailing out the financial industry thieves who perpetrated the disaster..

David Dayen at Firedoglake weighs in with notes and comments from the live FCIC press conference:

"Angelides says that he hopes the American people read the report. He said the mission was to record history and not rewrite it (a nod to the dissenting opinion)?

"…Angelides: there’s much anger in this country about what’s transpired. Many looked to this commission for answers. We kept these people in mind as we completed our work. There has been no shortage of debate over the bailout and too big to fail. But our mission was to figure out the origins. How did it come to pass that we were forced to choose between two stark and painful alternatives? Rescue the banks or let them crash?

"Six major conclusions. Every commissioner here today (all the Democrats) agree.

1) This crisis was avoidable. There were many warning signs ignored or discounted.
2) Failures in regulation
3) Dramatic breakdowns in corporate governance including too many financial firms acting recklessly and taking on too much risk;
4) Excessive borrowing and risk by households and Wall Street
5) Government was ill-prepared for the crisis, inconsistent response added to panic.
6) Breaches of accountability became widespread.

"Angelides: Predatory lending practices going back to the late 1990s. Risky trading activities grew exponentially, market for derivatives exploded, and short-term borrowing.

“Pervasive permissiveness.” Regulators and leaders did not take action. Evidence of failures across the board. Federal Reserve failed to ask. Even as housing market fell in 2006, Wall Street created $1.6 trillion in MBS. Moody’s rated 30 mortgage backed securities triple-A EVERY DAY.

"…This is a key question. Did you refer anything for criminal prosecution? Angelides says they were asked to refer to authorities any individual who violated the laws of the United States. Where they found violations, they did refer. “We will not comment on any specific referrals.”

"…Just listening to this, you have to ask if it’s a whitewash or not. It’s hard to say, because this is a large report and I haven’t read all 576 pages. But the word “criminal” doesn’t really appear in this discussion, as a reporter is saying right now. And there’s at least a nod to how everybody is responsible, with as much a focus on the regulators as the CEOs.

"…This is a good point from Byron Georgiou. It would be remiss to suggest that everything in this report has been solved by Dodd-Frank. The financial system looks the same in 2011 that it did in 2007. In fact, the too big to fail firms got even bigger."

So, under the Obama administration, just like past administrations since Reagan, the thieves will probably not be prosecuted (too many of their Wall Street crony protectors were in the Bush administration and many are now in the Obama White House) and it's business as usual at the Wall Street bailed-out-with-taxpayers'-and- borrowed- monies casino. 

More gazillions in dirty profits for Wall Street and the other wealthy few, more unemployment and economic inequality struggles for Main Street, courtesy of the corporate puppets on Capitol Hill and in the White House.