We are bombarded with images of Wall Street’s evils and excesses. It’s martinis and yachts in one frame, foreclosed homes and a broken American dream in the next. “To those on Wall Street who may be listening today, let me be very clear,” presidential candidate Bernie Sanders thunders. “The greed of Wall Street and corporate America is destroying the fabric of our nation.”

The housing crisis of 2008 sits at the center of this narrative. It was greed that drove subprime lending. It was greed that packaged up the loans in those murky CDOs. And it was ultimately greed that cheated millions of Americans out of a home and left them with a mountain of debt. The Big Short, the bestselling Michael Lewis book later adapted into a blockbuster movie, offered this story as a picture book parable.

But the housing crisis was not driven by greed. Like all housing booms and busts, it was the natural product of a financialized housing market, in which homes become assets and a socially necessary good is transformed into a freewheeling commodity.