Waiting for a subprime perp walk

The banks dreamed up ever more creative ways to give anybody a loan. They pushed mortgages with optional payments and "liar loans" that required little proof of income. All this inflated home prices, which nudged even sane people into bigger, variable-rate loans just to land a house.

Those mortgages were then bundled into investment securities, jumbled up with other kinds of debt and chopped into pieces again to be bought up by institutional investors hungry for yield. And like flippers of Miami condos, many borrowed to get in on the action.