Firedoglake
"This has been coming for a long, long time. For years Wall Street made record profits, many multiples of GDP growth and higher than other industries' profits. What they were doing is using heavy leverage, ignoring actual default risk, assuming that housing prices would always rise, and booking future profits in the present as income. Imagine if you could say 'well, I think I'll make 1 million over the next 10 years, so I'll just sell that money to investors now, pay them later, and book the sale price of 900K this year.' Works, till it doesn't."