Legend
IB = Investment Bank.
the expense of ill-informed, inexperienced and in some cases poorly educated individuals
many of whom were in minority groups struggling to “find their feet” and establish their
families in the US. As stated by Barak Obama: “And while it’s true that many Americans
took on financial obligations that they knew or should have known they could not have
afforded, millions of others were, frankly, duped. They were misled by deceptive terms and
conditions, buried deep in the fine print.”14
• Inappropriate relaxation of lending regulations and the award of mortgages to recipients
that were “bound to fail”.
• The occurrence of the crisis under the full force of the internal control requirements of
the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act within one of the most highly regulated industries, financial
services.