It appears there are a number of people who take an all or none position on the sub-prime question. But any amount of bad debt contributed by the sub-prime helped sink the ship. Therefore the question is: how bad would the crisis have been without the sub-prime debt which some people (Edward Pinto) say totals in the trillions? I’m not an expert, so I don’t have all the answers. But I find it difficult to believe that bad sub-prime loans which many banks were forced to agree to didn’t have a very big and bad part in the disaster.
To me the real culprit is Fan and Fred pushing these absurd products based on an implicit federal guaranty. And they're immune from reform because of all the money they've give to Barney and his buddies. It's corruption on an amazing scale.