Bill Ackman on the cause of the credit crisis

What caused the credit crisis was that more and more risk was hidden away in the system by companies that didn't have the wherewithal to meet their obligations. I remember people asking the question, "Where was all the risk going?" was the question people were asking, you know, five years ago. And the answer is that the risk was going to companies like MBIA and Ambac and the risk was going into CDOs, and the risk was going into companies like AIG Financial Products. There was a lot of 'pass the hot potato' and very little attention paid to it by regulators.

~William Ackman, managing partner, Pershing Square Capital Management, CNBC's Squawk Box, April 27th, 2010