We attended today's Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) hearing earlier today. The Commission brought "experts who have researched the financial crisis for a forum in Washington, DC on February 26-27, 2010 at American University Washington College of Law."
More smoke than light was shed on the cause of the crisis. I was struck, however, by one comparison made. In the last session on Shadow Banking, Gary Gorton, Professor of Finance, School of Management, Yale University, compared subprime borrowers to e-coli, suggesting they had "infected" the home loan market.
According to Wikipedia, "Between 2004-2006 the share of subprime mortgages relative to total originations ranged from 18%-21%, versus less than 10% in 2001-2003 and during 2007. The value of USA subprime mortgages was estimated at $1.3 trillion as of March 2007, [17] with over 7.5 million first-lien subprime mortgages outstanding." That's a lot of e-coli, too much for this analogy to …