Unregulated banks, not subprime borrowers, drove the global financial crisis.

Evidence

But it led to tremendous pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—who in turn pressured banks and other lenders—to extend mortgages to people who were borrowing over their heads. That’s called subprime lending. It lies at the root of our current calamity.” David Min (2011), a financial analyst at the Center for American Progress, empirically refuted this displacement of responsibility. High-risk home mortgages precipitated the financial problem, but evidence pointed to unregulated banks as major contributors to the global economic crisis. They bundled the bad loans into obscure derivatives and sold them worldwide. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1521

Categorization

• XREF: Displacement of responsibility is Bandura’s core moral disengagement mechanism; this is a concrete example of causal attribution being shifted to blame victims. — connects to: Spain’s crisis emerged from regional savings banks, not its largest internationalized banks — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 185; The Eurozone crisis was private, not public, debt — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 190; European banking crisis was mostly private-sector exposure, not sovereign over-spending — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 240 (+1 more)