Below are links to Yaron Brook’s explanation of how the US housing bubble and financial crisis happened. Yaron Brook has an MBA, a Ph.D. in Finance, and was a professor of finance at a university.
Here is a short video on what caused the crisis:
Here is an audio course that goes through the details of what happened and why:
The Financial Crisis: What Happened and Why
Ayn Rand’s essay: What is Capitalism? (YouTube audio)
Capitalism at The Ayn Rand Lexicon.
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Objectivism In Depth 
Over regulation and too many costly EPA regs. Sarbanes Oxley super expensive for publicly held companies to employ the regs.
EPA regs – some of them were too costly. Not all, some of the just plain stupid regs.
Over regulation of publicly held companies caused companies to have to stop hiring or raising salaries. I know because my company closed due to spending a boat load of money trying to keep up with Sarbanes Oxley and EPA regs, which seemed to be a new reg each day. Not – talking of pollution or dumping of waste. Talking of stupid EPA regs designed for the government to make money.
🙂
Certainly, those two factors are among the vast array of regulations that make the general climate in the US hostile to business. They do carry destructive consequences.
However, Yaron Brook’s thesis in the lecture course is that the primary, basic cause of the 2007 crisis is something much deeper and more pervasive in our system: the Fed’s regulation of interest rates. Other regulations, bailouts and subsidies make things worse, and help shape how the destructive consequences of the market manipulation manifest. The scale of the (very real) corruption that flourishes in the market is made possible by government manipulations, regulations and bailouts.
By the way, Dr. Brook’s book is available for pre-order: Free Market Revolution
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