In November, Queen Elizabeth asked London School of Economics professors why no one had predicted the credit crunch. They had their shot at answering. Now The Guardian is asking readers to answer, and they are coming up with a variety of answers. Surprisingly enough, most commenters do provide nicely thought-out answers, right or wrong. Like this one: Interest rates, particularly longer term interest rates were too low due to the wall of money from Asia buying up government bonds and money from pension funds who were being forced by government legislation to match assets and liabilities which meant buying those same government bonds that Asian central banks were buying. As a result there was a chase for yield, buying assets that yielded more than the equivalent government bond, corporate bonds, utilities, local government bonds and, yes Mortgage backed securities. And in that process risk was either ignored or swept under the carper by the rating agencies who gave very risky assets AAA ratings. Due to this demand for mortgage backed securities the originators of mortgages loosened their lending standards in order to create more 'product' and lent to people who ere in no position to repay, when they started to default the bonds that were previously rated AAA were downgraded and plummeted in value. There you have it, but I'm sure people would prefer something along the lines of, it was all the greedy bankers fault string em up. But the clever comments are worth a read as well. For example: Well, ma'am, you know how nobody is allowed to ask you a direct question because you're too important? Same with the bankers. Read them all here .