Best post I've read yet on how we got in to this financial meltdown comes from Megan McArdle.

She takes a higher level viewpoint - not getting into the nitty gritty of who lent what to whom and why, but instead thinking about what lead all sides to fundamentally misjudge risks. People made fun of him at the time, but Donald Rumsfeld was right, it's the unknown unknowns that you really have to look out for.

Sadly, we probably won't see any fixes based on this kind of thinking coming out of our panicked politicians. Instead, they will probably find ways to make it worse.