We are going through a sub-prime crisis or sub-prime turbulence.
It is clear that secret commissions are a feature of the sub-prime lending market.
In the sub-prime crisis, banks and insurance companies that had been gambling found themselves in difficulties.
I have already expressed criticism about how slow they were in downgrading their credit ratings for structural finance backed up by sub-prime lending.
To put this into context, the securitised market for credit cards is about as large as the sub-prime mortgage market.
What started as a sub-prime crisis has now moved way beyond this to embrace the whole economy.
However, largely speaking, the sub-prime mortgage lending area was unregulated.
These securities, backed by the sub-prime market, were bought on a massive scale by hedge funds mostly domiciled in tax havens, which are exempt from any regulation.
