The boom and bust of the housing and financial sectors raise the natural question: what happened? As economists, politicians, and the general public point their fingers or scratch their heads, this panel will look beyond populist bogeymen and currently dominant economic theories to examine the Austrian school of economics—based on the work of F. A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Carl Menger—and how its theory of business cycles offers a better basis for understanding financial crises and recessions.