One of my favorites, Walter E. Williams, explains the histrionic nonsense behind the subprime bailout. (For those of you not familiar with Dr. Williams, he serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, and is the author of "More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well.")
Many lenders did make loans to people who had no realistic ability to pay them back. But that doesn't qualify as fraud, although there might have been a bit of exuberance in the repackaging of the mortgages into securities and selling them to investors. Some argue that many borrowers defrauded the banks by misrepresenting their income, the so-called "no doc" loans or "liar's loans".
