This paper was originally prepared for a talk on “The Dangers of Printing Too Much Money”, which was given on 17 June 2008 to the Investment Management Institute Conference at the Avenue Hotel in Chicago. In that talk, I said that every major Wall Street investment bank was bankrupt, or in grave danger of it, for the reasons given in Subsection (2.3) below. Many in the audience have since apologized for ridiculing that remark and suggested making the talk into a paper updated for recent events. In doing so, I have focused on the legal and regulatory environment that precipitated the financial crisis, the “market failure” in the CDO (collateralized debt obligation) market that sparked the crisis, its spread into a general credit crisis, the consequences of the bail out of financial institution, and Government actions that can alleviate the crisis.