The Big Short is a good guide if you want a kind of slick bullshit guide.  If you want to really know what happened, and who is to blame (and yes, there are specific parties that are to blame, its not "all of us") check out Yves Smith's "Econned".  Its readable and very accurate as to what has gone on in economics,…

see that's where ya'll are missing the point — they tanked the company, but in the meanwhile, for the three or four years before that, they were amassing huge bonuses based on unrealized profits that were never going to manifest.  Read some Bill Black if you want to understand what these crooks did and how they did…