The Occupy Wall Street political movement blamed Wall Street bankers for the financial crisis of 2008, but the bankers were just crony capitalist pawns in a in a system crafted by politicians on Pennsylvania Avenue. That's why Washington DC gained more one-percenters during the last decade than any other American city. The crime was attempting to expand home ownership beyond what households could afford by enticing and forcing financial institutions to take extreme risks, with tax payers picking up the tab. The political cover-up in the aftermath is even worse than the original crime. The Federal Reserve fueled an asset bubble, housing policy steered it to housing, and the extreme leverage required to fund political housing goals magnified losses instead of profits. The financial sector bailout, housing market and homeowner bailout, and fiscal and monetary stimulus were all more of the same. A financial sector meltdown was avoided, but at the expense of greater systemic risk prospectively. The Great Recession ended, but the recovery remains weak with economic costs in the aftermath many multiples those during the lending bubble and prospective economic risks are worse still. The only relevant economic precept is the original - incentives matter. Understanding the financial crisis requires no more than an explanation of how politicians perverted them. The simple prescription to avoid future systemic financial crises is to limit discretionary monetary policy, separate subsidy from finance, impose appropriate capital requirements, improve political oversight and re-introduce market discipline, the opposite of the Dodd-Frank reform legislation.