Five years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers (2008), there is still disagreement in the expert community regarding the causes of the financial crisis. Countless monographs and studies on the financial crisis have already been published worldwide. In the current discussion on identifying causes, two opposing explanatory patterns can be observed: One side argues that the market has failed due to an inefficient market architecture that led to human failures. They call for effective regulation and oversight of the financial sector, combined with a monetary policy focused on monetary goals. The other side contends that financial crises are inherently unavoidable in a capitalist economic system and always follow identical patterns of emergence and development. The author team analyzes the development and locates the main cause of the current financial crisis in global structural problems.