Reply #5: The MBS/MBO side of the crisis is much bigger than the foreclosure side.

[girl gone mad]

If it was only about lax lending standards and corrupt mortgage bankers encouraging unqualified borrowers to buy overpriced real estate, we'd be in a manageable recession. However, those bad mortgages were levered (up to 40 times), scrambled and sold around the globe to unsuspecting investors, laying the ground for the worldwide economic collapse. Financial institutions essentially created their own printing presses.

Wall Street's greed ranks right up there with the Fed's complicit foolishness and congress's sleazy quid pro quo system in the myriad list of causes.