As a Money Coach, I've seen and heard many reasons for the financial meltdown (including the fact that each of the candidates seems to be personally responsible). Following is one man's take on the situation. It is worth reading and thinking about. Darold Herdes thus becomes a Money Coach guest columnist. Darold is a semi retired federal government employee and a former economics teacher. He lives here in Colorado Springs. (Full disclosure: Darold also is my cousin, and he occasionally buys me coffee).

The current financial crisis started on Main Street with government help and got out of control on Wall Street. The root cause is lack of integrity. Many say greed, but making money is capitalism; abusing and exploiting the system has to do with morality.

1. The problem started with people making loans that they knowingly couldn't afford on the expectation that housing prices would keep going up. The abuses were many including going to the IRS website and downloading the form required by lenders and making up the data.

2. The second problem was the predatory lenders, especially the mortgage brokers, who convinced borrowers to take unaffordable (sub prime) loans with ridiculous terms such as interest only and loans over 100 percent of the house value (just take out 120 percent and pay off your credit cards and car loan).

3. The third problem was the investment bankers who bought up the mortgages, bundled them into collateralized debt obligations (CDO's) and sold them as safe AAA securities.Then these banks treated the CDO paper as adding to their reserves, which enabled them to issue more loans and added to the inverted pyramid of credit.

4. The fourth problem was the collusion between the investment banks and insurance companies to issue credit default swaps (CDS's), also known as derivatives or insurance against the CDO's. They then created a market for the CDS's with hedge funds and other investors at arbitrary values.

5. The fifth problem was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which were encouraged by both the Clinton and Bush administrations to support the delusion that every one is entitled to own their own homes by backing the sub prime mortgages.

6. The sixth problem was representatives in Congress using the Credit Reinvestment Act to support Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in backing sub prime loans.

7. The seventh problem was the Bush administration promoting de-regulation and weakening financial oversight of the financial industry including the non-regulation of CDS's.

8. The eighth problem is theTreasury Department and the Federal Reserve which were complicit in the financial market abuses and ignored the fact that the dot.com bubble was replaced by money flows to the housing sector starting in 2001 which then created the housing bubble.

Bill Stanley is the Money Coach; he can be reached at MoneyCoachBill@aol.com.