Out of concern that the complexity of the financial crisis gets swept by some into a non-analytical jack-in-the-box, I've penned two initial and short bits on the financial crisis.
It Was Not an 'Act of God', Part I
"Serious people" knew about and studied the credit risks and the case of falling home prices (how widely they were known is something Congress should investigate further, IMHO). "Failure" was not inevitable. Choices were made.
It Was Not an 'Act of God', Part II
If you thought that a "sub-prime" crisis was something new, you'd be wrong. Not just wrong on a technicality, but missed-the-whole-show wrong.
This piece outlines the case of Green Tree Financial, and asks how it was that ratings agencies, who knew of a bankruptcy, didn't notice that history was repeating itself.
Oh, yeah: the Green Tree "case" isn't something I dug up from 1950s case law or something. It started in the 1990s and came to a head with a fairly high-profile bankruptcy (of Conseco) in ... wait for it ... 2002.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Weekend Reflections: It was not an 'Act of God'
