This post is part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst in Money 2008 feature.

The year 2008 brought the word "greed" to new levels with major companies going bankrupt thanks to the greed of their top execs, who were more worried about lining their own pockets than about the interests of their customers and shareholders. This greed also helped to fuel the housing bubble that burst and sent home prices falling in what seems like an unending downward spiral. As the financial news continues to worsen, it's hard to pick the biggest money story of the year. We've pulled together our top four picks, and it's up to you to vote on the biggest money story of the year.

Here are our top four picks in alphabetical order:

Collapse of Wall Street
The world hasn't seen so many Wall Street firms go bust since the Great Depression, and we seem to be teetering on the edge of another worldwide depression. Top Wall Street execs pocketed millions, and in some cases, billions of dollars thanks to sales of complex financial instruments that it appears no one truly understood (or if they did understand their toxic natures they perpetrated a huge fraud on the investors who bought them). Now these same executives pocket millions in golden parachutes as they leave the firms they destroyed. And, while they enjoy their millions, investors, customers and employees of these now defunct or badly bruised firms face destroyed careers and/or portfolios.

The Bush administration has taken the approach that business can do no harm. So we have had eight years of the fox guarding the hen house. Adding a few more thoughts to yesterday's Sunday Funnies: Business should have NBA type salary cap. The subject of executive pay at public corporations sometimes raises eyebrows, sometimes raises voices, and often loud protests.

When companies perform poorly financially and it is reflected in the share price the protests are even louder and more justified.

Like they say about pornography... When executive pay becomes so high that it becomes obscene, you may not be able to define it exactly, but you know it when you see it!

Unfortunately these protests are not coming from the board room, or large institutional investors or pension funds, although they should! They come from the "hard working stiffs" that go unheard and disrespected -- and the common shareholder.

Now that the media has discovered that the housing market is a mess and that back room dirty deeds were indeed done, we're being treated to a daily diet of outraged stories. Most seem to center on the fact that while the mortgage industry lost all control, Wall Street conveniently looked the other way.

It's hard to swallow so many "duhs." And I don't mean to chide the media for finally cluing in to the level of graft going on under its very noses. Any greater unveiling of the mortgage industry shenanigans that took place in our late, great "housing boom" only serves to hopefully prevent such things from happening again.

Except that it won't.

The Savings and Loan scandals. Michael Milken and his junk bond boys. The dot.com bomb. Enron. Tyco. WorldCom. All of these scandals were born of different circumstances, but the primary ingredient was the same: Rampant, unchecked greed. That's the name of the game, these days, apparently. Who cares what it means for America's economic health, or even society as a whole.

So even as we watch the sub-prime drama unfold, and wring our hands and wonder if it will impact the larger economy (it will), and even as lawmakers and contrite CEOs vow this sort of wretched excess will never happen again, rest assured that there's obscene amounts of money being made elsewhere, and that Wall Street is looking away.

It seems to be the American way of doing business these days.