The most sensible thing I've read about the financial crisis so far

Is this: http://cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9660

Also, I'm sick of hearing "the financial crisis was caused by X" (where X varies depending on one's political leanings). There is no single cause. There are many complex causes and contributing factors which added up to create a crisis. Some point directly at government policies, and others point at the market. But understanding all of them is difficult, and people want a simple answer that supports their political preconceptions, so they tend to single out one or two of these factors.

This Wikipedia article provides a good overview of most of them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_subprime_mortgage_financial_crisis#Causes_of_crisis

One of the root causes which I think has not received enough attention is the fact that we have fiat money. If our money was based on something like gold, which has real value and the supply of which cannot be arbitrarily increased by government, we would not have the kind of bubble/bust cycle that got us into this mess. I support Ron Paul's effort to abolish the Fed, and to restore the use of gold as a form of legal tender, which would restrain the federal government from inflating the money supply and manipulating interest rates, and would help to keep us out of these sorts of predicaments in the future.