How did this happen?
How did our economy come so close to collapse? How did we lose jobs, homes and retirement funds?

I can’t tell you how often I get those questions. Ordinary people are angry that they are suffering the grievous effects of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and they want an explanation about how it happened. They aren’t getting it from the big banks that created this mess and that were bailed out with taxpayer dollars and they aren’t getting it from the government officials who were supposed to be guarding against this very disaster that has befallen us.

That’s why I decided to write Big Bad Banks. From my humble perch as a banker in Lafayette, La., I have seen this disaster shaping up for many years. While the big bankers and government officials concoct elaborate theories about what happened — theories that always seem to lay the blame on somebody else — I can tell you right now what caused it: pure greed and ego.

Over the years our nation has gone down a path that bestowed more and more power on people who were interested more in promoting their own influence and ideology than they were in serving their clients and constituents. The result is that banks grew ever larger and took greater risks in the quest for bigger profits and fatter paychecks. All the while, government regulators sat back approvingly and watched it happen.

From my perspective the rapid growth of the biggest banks and brokers was a train wreck waiting to happen. And now it has happened and the rest of us in America are suffering as a result. In Big Bad Banks I will show you the warning signals that went unheeded, the vast egos that drove the push for power and money at the expense of service to country and community and the bad behavior that resulted from greed and ego. My goal is twofold: for you, the reader, to understand what happened and for you, the citizen, to insist to your own bankers and lawmakers that it never happens again.

— C.R. “Rusty” Cloutier