Nader: Financial crisis ''pure greed'

• Tweet

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 (UPI) -- Independent U.S. presidential candidate Ralph Nader says he predicted the current Wall Street crisis, which he says was caused by "pure greed."

In a meeting Monday with reporters and editors of the Washington Web site Politico, Nader said: "I predicted this. All this I've written about five, 10 years ago."

He added that the financial turmoil, triggered in part by the insolvency of the giant Lehman Brothers investment bank, was caused by "pure greed, coupled with concentrated power on Wall Street and elsewhere."

Nader told Politico that banks and other corporations had engaged in "a massive, imprudent acceptance and transfer of risk" and that "the rubber band eventually snapped."

Making his fourth bid for the White House, Nader, 74, said neither of the major party candidates are addressing the root causes of the bank failures and are too worried about merely containing fallout to aggressively regulate the banks' irresponsible behavior, Politico reported.