You really do need to read some of the new books, written by Wall St insiders as to the cause of this crisis. But hey, if you will not believe these financial folks who saw this coming, well, your loss. Oh, bankers never use to loan money to folks that could not provide a source of income. The bankers use to be real careful about whom they loaned large sums of money to. In fact, it was the bankers job to say who could afford it or not. Hell, when I was young, I was turned down a loan as they wanted to make sure I could pay it back, before they loaned me the money. But IF, you can make a loan, than sell it off, to be bundled with other like loans, sooner or later it's gonna come crashing down. NOW, if you take out an insurance on a loan you no longer own, which you knew was gonna go bad when the adustable interest rate went up, well, that seems rather criminal to me. While banks were pressured to make sub prime loans, a loan officer could simply refuse to loan, and probably would have if he had to hold that loan in his own bank. If not for the deregulations, this would not have happened in the degree that it did. But deregs enrich the financiers, as new tools for profits come online, designed to enrich no one, but the financiers. But blame it on the poor folks, but do so dishonestly.