Sunday, March 13, 2011

The Kind of Complexity that Led to the Great Recession

A major reason - besides greed - for the Great Recession was the issuance of so-called securities that very, very few understood. All that was important was that the "security' could be quickly sold to the next sucker.

Bloomberg writes about Lehman's use of one such "security". I can't say I fully understand it but Lehman was able to convince JPMorgan for at least a couple of months that the "security" was worth at least $5 billion. Eventually, JP caught on to Lehman's ledgerdemain. Four days later Lehman filed for bankruptcy.

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