Behind every financial crisis lurks a "political bubble" policy biases that foster market behaviors leading to financial instability. Rather than tilting against risky behavior, political bubbles arising from a potent combination of beliefs, institutions, and interests aid, abet, and amplify risk. Demonstrating how political bubbles helped create the real estate-generated financial bubble and the 2008 financial crisis, this book argues that similar government oversights in the aftermath of the crisis undermined Washington's response to the "popped" financial bubble, and shows how such patterns have occurred repeatedly throughout US history.