If you are inclined to explore the causes of the subprime mortgage crisis, you will undoubtedly be confronted with a complex tale of high-risk borrowers, mortgage-backed securities, and collateralized debt obligations.
In fact, all you really need to know is that the crisis now choking the globe was brought about by a bunch of greedy bastards (GBs), who thought that it was a good idea to lend lots of money to people with poor credit, often without verifying the income of the borrowers. Betting that the housing market would continue to rise, the borrowers and the GBs were then f**ked when the housing market began to fall in 2006: the borrowers because they were losing equity (which they could get on appreciating mortgages even if they weren't able to pay the principal monthly), thus making it impossible to refinance; and the GBs because the borrowers began to default to the tune of billions of dollars.
Of course the story is FAR more complex than this, but as I was "researching" this post I read that Bush's economic stimulus package might offer me a tax rebate, so I gotta go do my taxes...
If I do get a rebate I promise to buy something to stimulate the US economy and not the German one.
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