Financial Institutions Caused this Crisis Says Wells Fargo's Kovacevich

The current financial crisis was caused by financial institutions themselves, not by their customers, Richard Kovacevich, MBA 67, chairman of Wells Fargo, told a Stanford audience. Financial institutions exhibited a total disregard for basic risk management fundamentals and even common sense. It was fueled by greed, lapses in ethical behavior, and was unchecked by the ratings agencies he told a gathering of business and academic leaders at the day-long program organized by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research on March 13. SIEPR: http://siepr.stanford.edu