DUDS.

• Debt (Purchases of things not-yet-earned via encumbrances on the purchaser's hoped-for future income/wealth)

• Derivatives (entities whose value depends on the value of something(s) else, even other derivatives)

• Unsound Money (Sound money is a commodity in one's posession or in a suitable warehouse having non-monetary uses and additional desirable properties. It is not a debt instrument or, worse, an I-owe-you-nothing note. It has no associated seignorage.) Fekete: “.....the root of all evil is the double D, or DD: Delibetare [Deliberate?] Debasement. “

• Unregulated Shadow Financial System

• [De]Regulation Oscillation It is not so much regulation versus lack of it; it is more that it takes generations for people to 'learn' what is safe. Accelerating deregulation in the late 1920s and again in the early 2000s left people without a cultural understanding of prudent investing.

• Deregulation allowing know-imprudent and formerly-regulated or forbidden  practices. E.g., the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealing the part of the Glass-Steagall Act prohibiting a bank [holding company] from owning other financial companies. The repeal enabled commercial lenders such as Citigroup, which was in 1999 then the largest U.S. bank by assets, to underwrite and trade instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations and establish so-called structured investment vehicles, or SIVs, that bought those securities. It also allowed the one-stop financial services company, with its inherent conflict-of-interest re investment advice.

• Accounting Is Our Accounting System Flawed?

• Corruption manifested as lack of transparency, disrespect for strict accounting standards, Lying, and Stealing.

• Elected Officials with goals not aligned with the public interest.

DUDS!