Yalman Onaran is a reporter for Bloomberg News and is the author of Zombie Banks: How Broken Banks and Debtor Nations Are Crippling the Global Economy. Onaran was born in Istanbul, came to the U.S. in 1987 to attend college in Ohio, and then moved to New York for graduate school at Columbia. He joined Bloomberg News in 1998 and was covering Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns when they became the first to fall in the financial crisis. He now writes feature articles about banking issues worldwide, comparing the problems of European banks to their U.S. counterparts as well as identifying the effectiveness of new bank regulations.

1. Which FCIC View best represents the causes of the Financial Crisis?

Majority Conclusions.

2. Which narrative presented by Douglas Elliott and Martin Baily of the Brookings Institute in Telling the Narrative of the Financial Crisis: Not Just a Housing Bubble best represents the causes of the Financial Crisis?

“Everyone” was at fault: Wall Street, the government, and our wider society.

3. I believe the crisis is ongoing and I project the Global Financial Crisis will end in the year

2013 or beyond.

4. What were the primary causes of the Global Financial Crisis?

Too many people borrowed too much much that they couldn't pay back. Too many banks facilitated this lending while being part of the borrowing binge themselves. Because the banks, consumers and companies had too much leverage and very thin capital to protect themselves, a drop in prices could bring the whole house of cards down. Then governments took on some of the debt to "fix" the problem, but this has only shifted the problem from private balance sheets to public ones. So it's the turn of countries to blow up.

5. What still needs to change as a result of the crisis?

The zombie banks that are being propped up by their governments need to die. The biggest banks need to be split up so there's no more too-big-to-fail going forward. There needs to be a serious debt restructuring of consumer, government and corporate debt so we can get out of the credit crunch.

Compiled by Gary Karz, CFA
Host of InvestorHome

Global Financial Crisis Survey

Please send suggestions and comments to Investor Home

Last update 12/12/2011. Copyright © 2011 Investor Home. All rights reserved. Disclaimer