Mr. Bernanke's most cogent critics argue that by keeping rates low and, importantly, loudly promising to keep them low, the Greenspan-Bernanke strategy triggered a global search for higher yielding investments. Geniuses on Wall Street met that demand by turning subprime mortgages into ersatz safe short-term securities. The global demand was almost insatiable, and the fees irresistible to Wall Street and mortgage originators. When they ran out of worthy borrowers, these outfits made mortgages to anyone who could sign his or her name because Wall Street was eager for product to sell to hungry investors.

Gambling is a tax on people who are bad at statistics.

And while I agree that those Wall Street Brokerage entities had little/no count-part risk, that was due to their lack of ethics and lax regulations around the radical financial products they were concocting and foisting off on the banking industry.

Bernake is a moron. The government kept pushing for unqualified people to be allowed to become buyers.

They incentivized and at times almost demanded that unqualified buyers be allowed to become landed gentry. And when people in the government said "This might be a problem holmes!" they were poo-poo'ed and brushed aside.

**** Bernake, **** him right in his eye.