A typical story, much favored by followers of Friedrich von Hayek and the Austrian School of economics, goes like this: In the run up to the crisis, banks lent more money to borrowers than savers would have been prepared to lend otherwise, thanks to excessively cheap money provided by central banks, particularly the United States Federal Reserve. Commercial banks, flush with central banks’ money, advanced credit for many unsound investment projects, with the explosion of financial innovation (particularly of derivative instruments) fueling the lending frenzy.
哈耶克和奥地利学派的追随者最喜欢的故事是：在通向危机的过程中，银行贷给借款人的钱超过了存款人准备贷出的钱，而之所以如此，是因为中央银行——主要是美联储——提供了过多的廉价资金。商业银行由于获得了央行的资金而兴奋不已，把钱借给了大量并不靠谱的投资项目，而金融创新的大爆发（特别是衍生工具）更是助长了这一借贷疯狂。