The Federal Reserve (a private corporation owned by a handful of private banks and, since 1913, put in charge of the country’s monetary policy and money supply/printing) cuts interest rates nine times in 2001 to a 40-year low of 2.5%.

Low interest rates make money cheap to borrow, so cash begins to flood the economy. Banks bolster their bets with enormous quantities of debt. Wall Street firms will soon have an average debt to capital ratio of 32 to 1.