In January, 2011, the Financial Crisis Commission announced its findings. The usual suspects were not much of a surprise; what is particularly notable is how little had changed on Wall Street since the crisis in September of 2008. According to The New York Times, "The report examined the risky mortgage loans that helped build the housing bubble; the packaging of those loans into exotic securities that were sold to investors; and the heedless placement of giant bets on those investments." In spite of the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act of 2010 and the panel's report, The New York Times reported that "little on Wall Street has changed." One commissioner, Byron S. Georgiou, a Nevada lawyer, said the financial system was “not really very different” in 2010 from before the crisis. “In fact," he went on, "the concentration of financial assets in the largest commercial and investment banks is really significantly higher today than it was in the run-up to the crisis, as a result of the evisceration of some of the institutions, and the consolidation and merger of others into larger institutions.” Richard Baker, the president of the Managed Funds Association, told The Financial Times, "The most recent financial crisis was caused by institutions that didn't know how to adequately manage risk and were over-leveraged. And I worry that if there is another crisis, it will be because the same institutions have failed to learn from the mistakes of the past." From the testimonies of managers of some of those institutions, one might surmise that the lack of learning in the two years after the crisis was due to a refusal to admit to even a partial role in crisis. In other words, there appears to have been a crisis of mentality, which, as it contains intractable assumptions and ideological beliefs, as well as stubborn defensiveness, is not easy to dislodge such that legislation past Dodd-Frank could ever be passed.
Lehman was a particularly inept player leading up to the crisis. Zambio
The full essay is at "Causes of the Financial Crisis."