Is China to blame for the 2008 financial crisis?

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September 2008: Made in China?
Everyone knows that irresponsible lending, the securitization of risky debt and a dip in the U.S. housing market led to the financial meltdown of 2008, right?

Not so fast.

A new study from the Erasmus Research Institute of Management places the blame on the frugality of Chinese savers and their effect on U.S. interest rates, (not greedy U.S. consumers, the lenders who enabled them nor the ratings agencies who told everyone the collateralized debt obligations nobody could understand were just peachy).

What have we learned since Lehman failed?
Megabank deals are getting bigger. Wall Street fights reform tooth and nail. Fiduciary duty is dead in the water. And now anyone can become an investment bank. So, not much.

Carlyle deal machine keeps rolling
Apparently, nobody told Carlyle Group that the M&A market is slow. The private equity group just announced the $4.9-billion cash purchase of the specialty performance coatings business of DuPont.

Au revoir, Greece
French banks prepare to pull out the euro zone's main delinquent.

Urban China: Not the economic engine we thought it would be
The flow of people from rural to urban China is supposed to drive industrialization and grow the middle class, as it did in other countries. Sounds great, but this model isn't necessarily applicable to China.