In his classic book on economic history, Charles Kindleberger argued that asset bubbles follow a predictable pattern. A new opportunity or technology sparks investor euphoria. Asset prices quickly rise to an unsustainable level. Then suddenly, people stop buying, and panic ensues.

In September 2008, the financial storms that had battered global markets since spring began to threaten the legendary investment bank Goldman Sachs. The 139-year-old financial titan had seen its stock plummet nearly 50 percent in a matter of weeks.

Bernie Madoff. AIG. Allen Stanford. When Marianne Jennings talks to her undergraduate students about business ethics these days, those are the subjects they want to talk about.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) recently came out with new rules governing "mark-to-market accounting." Entities employing mark-to-market adjust the value of financial assets up or down, according to fair market value.

Hope Berman Levin, the regional president for U.S. Bank in Arizona, recently touched on some of the rapid-fire changes that are happening in banking, during a talk at the W. P. Carey School's 26th Annual  Dean's Council of 100 Executive of the Year Luncheon.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced the Obama administration's plan to rescue financial markets yesterday. The plan was long on promise and short on details, however, which sent markets spinning.

The pain of the newly-declared recession knows no boundaries, and the Asian economies are not immune, but that region is positioned to rebound faster than the U.S. and come out stronger than before, according to Tom McCabe, managing director of Standard Chartered Bank PLC.

If the federal government really wants to stem the financial crisis, it must decisively address the huge — and still growing — number of delinquent and soon-to-be-delinquent mortgages, according to finance and real estate Professor Anthony Sanders.

In the last month, financial markets came as close to collapsing as they have since the Great Depression, and the root of their woes was frozen credit markets. The crisis sparked several weeks of furious and futile improvisation by U.S. regulators and lawmakers.

It's said the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and some people sweating through the credit-market meltdown might agree. Underlying the wreckage are decades of regulatory and legislative decisions that opened the door to today's financial woes.