First, Wall Street players flooded into this market because of the Federal Reserve's actions following the 2008 market crash. The risky experiment that's being

First, Wall Street players flooded into this market because of the Federal Reserve's actions following the 2008 market crash. The risky experiment that's being run in production is global monetary policy. Central banks around the world are engaging in unprecedented behavior that is causing all sorts of market distortions. Second, the mainstream media tends to exaggerate when writing about financial products. A $479 million bond backed by rental payments? If you're going to lose sleep over that, are you going to lose sleep over Tesla's $2.2 billion in debt, which was rated junk by S&P in 2014? Third, a lot of discussions around Wall Street are presented in a false us-versus-them fashion. Blackstone is publicly-traded. You can buy shares of Blackstone stock and collect a ~6% dividend if you so desire. You can invest in pure-play single family home renters like American Homes 4 Rent and Silver Bay Realty Trust, which are also publicly-traded. American Homes 4 Rent even has classes of participating preferred stock that give shareholders the ability to profit from appreciation in the value of the company's portfolio of single family residences. Too risky for your taste? You can bet on the rental trend by investing in well-established REITs like Equity Residential and Avalonbay Communities, which own lots of apartments and pay ~3% dividends. Finally, you insinuate that Wall Street is placing risk on the American economy, but the inconvenient truth about the last real estate bubble is that many Americans were just as deserving of blame as Wall Street and government agencies. Lots of people bought houses they couldn't afford based on the assumption that prices would continue to rise. Lots of people used their home equity like a piggy bank. Liar's loans? You can't have a liar's loan without somebody willing to lie. Bottom line: there was plenty of greed in all corners of the housing market and while people who didn't do anything wrong did suffer, it's intellectually dishonest to pretend that everybody who lost a home was a victim.