Many people blame today’s financial crisis on Wall Street. However, once the crisis had begun, the crash on Main Street was caused by consumers realizing the emperor had no clothes—that many of the products and services they were buying were simply not worth their cost. The same house that sold for $250,000 in 1999, which was nine years older in 2008, was not worth $450,000 in 2008—even though many homebuyers were willing to pay that much for it, due to easy credit and a fear that prices would keep rising. Read More.