That Wall Street has gone down because of this is justice. They built a castle to rip people off. Not once in all these years have I come across a person inside a big Wall Street firm who was having a crisis of conscience. Steve Eisman

On a day when the Toronto Stock Exchange TSX Index hits a four year low, and the U.S. market's S&p 500 index hits a five year low, might I recommend this fascinating and approachable (if occasionally technical) article as one of the best insider stories on the root causes of the meltdown that I've come across to date - from Condé Nast's Portfolio.com:

The End, by Michael Lewis, November 11 2008

The outrageous bonuses, the slender returns to shareholders, the never-ending scandals, the bursting of the internet bubble, the crisis following the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management: Over and over again, the big Wall Street investment banks would be, in some narrow way, discredited. Yet they just kept on growing, along with the sums of money that they doled out to 26-year-olds to perform tasks of no obvious social utility. The rebellion by American youth against the money culture never happened. Why bother to overturn your parents’ world when you can buy it, slice it up into tranches, and sell off the pieces?

At some point, I gave up waiting for the end. There was no scandal or reversal, I assumed, that could sink the system.

Then came Meredith Whitney with news.