Too Big to Fail or Too Deceitful to be Caught?

International audience; This multidisciplinary article attempts to bridge the gap between policy-driven, agent-driven, psychological and market variables that may be factors in financial crises and may have been involved in the 2007–2009 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), which we use as an example. We conducted a quantitative study performed on 202 participants, who acted as proxies for consumers during that period. The results of this exploratory research tend to explain how transactions between eager borrowers/homebuyers and avid lenders developed in the context of a predatory broth, which had deceit at its center. This understanding can help regulators to canvas the use of financial tools and advertising techniques to minimize the negative impact on the economy.