Global financial crisis: How US housing industry went bust, shattered lives

In a series of events that led to the worst financial crisis in recent memory, large banks had to shut shop because they failed to read the fine print

“It is not what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It is what you know for sure that just ain't so.” Though the author of the quote is still unknown, there is nothing better than this to define the global financial crisis of 2008. Lewis Renary came up with mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in the late 1970s. While the American banking industry made good money by selling these MBSs and collateralised debt obligations (CDO), the bedrock of the US economy, the housing market, was heading towards a disastrous collapse. To put it simply, banks were on a lending spree,