Mike Whitney, The Real Lesson of the Financial Crisis

The faux-prosperity of the last decade was largely the result of a wholesale credit system which created a humongous amount of credit via sketchy debt instruments, off-balance sheet operations, massive leverage and derivatives. (The Fed's liquidity and conventional bank loans play a very small part in the modern credit system) Securitization--which is the conversion of pools of loans into securities--is at the center of the storm. It formed the asset-base upon which the investment banks and hedge funds stacked additional leverage creating an unstable debt-pyramid that couldn't withstand the battering of a slumping market. After two Bear Stearns funds defaulted 20 months ago, the securitization markets froze, credit dried up and the broader economy went into a tailspin. Now that investors know how risky securitized instruments really are, there's little chance that assets will regain their original value or that the market for structured debt will stage a comeback.