According to wallstreetonparade.com– It took eight years of research to compile a data set of annual balance sheets of more than 11,000 commercial banks dating back to 1870 in 17 advanced economies. And in every country, the study arrived at the same finding: concentrating the banking system in the hands of five or less giant banks leads to financial instability and more severe financial crises. The bank balance sheets of the following countries were examined: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The 150-year banking study is titled: “Survival of the Biggest: Large Banks and Financial Crises.” Its authors are Matthew Baron of Cornell University; Moritz Schularick of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and Sciences; and Kaspar Zimmermann of the Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.

Any analysis that says “x caused the 2008 financial crisis” is so simplistic that it’s more wrong than right, and it doesn’t matter which x the analysis points the finger at.

You could blame the big banks – they were the institutions that went bust or would’ve gone bust without government intervention. But why did they go bust? Because assets that they owned, based on the value of property and mortgages, collapsed in value. Why did mortgage-backed securities collapse in value? Because people were defaulting on mortgages.

Consider this – if you were to lend me money, and I refused to pay you back, wouldn’t you be a bit peeved if everyone blamed you for any financial problems that arose? Wouldn’t you be saying “hey, don’t blame me, blame the guy over there who took my money and won’t give it back”? I think that would be a pretty natural thing to do, and I think you’d have a perfectly legitimate argument that at least some of the blame should fall on me.

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