Michael Lewis wrote one of the best sports books as well as one of the best business books ever: Moneyball. He has an outstanding article at Portfolio.com about the current financial trainwreck and the stratospheric levels of ignorance and greed on Wall Street that caused it, and also alludes to the elephant in the room that no one will talk about:

In Bakersfield, California, a Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 and no English was lent every penny he needed to buy a house for $720,000.