Michael Lewis’s account of the collapse of Wall Street is a must read for insight and understand of what was going on that led to the current mess.

I know it won’t, but it should, end this foolish notion that markets are self-organizing, self-regulating, rational entities where rational actors maximize value and where self-interested firms don’t lie, cheat, and steal. Markets are social entities, perhaps best studied as networks governed by certain rules and norms–and those rules and norms read more like and MBA textbook than an Econ textbook. The implications of that are, I think, quite profound. Invisible hand my !#$%.