I assume you're talking about the subprime home mortgage debacle? Because the issue wasn't that the loans were subprime, so much as it was the massive amounts o

I assume you're talking about the subprime home mortgage debacle? Because the issue wasn't that the loans were subprime, so much as it was the massive amounts of institutional fraud across many layers of the mortgage business that enabled unqualified people to get loans (or loans larger than they qualified for). IOW, subprime loans were the murder weapon, not the murderer. EDIT: BTW, a subprime loan is just a loan that comes with terms that aren't as good as they could be due to the applicant having some sort of issue in their application (eg, no credit history, a bankruptcy, lots of missed payments, no collateral, lots of other debt, etc.).