The shortest description of the US financial crisis

Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch has given this really short and to the point description of the causes of the financial crisis, especially useful for other finance noobs like me! The description is:

"Take the current housing crisis that has now spread to the financial markets in general. The cause was too-easy credit that fueled a massive increase in housing prices as people bought houses they couldn’t afford with mortgages they weren’t able to pay off."

The whole article can be found at: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/26/the-us-government-engineered-the-current-economic-crisis/