by Christine Schenk
Lately I've been thinking about corruption. Maybe it's because we're in the season of Lent.
Or perhaps it comes of seeing "The Big Short," a based-on-a-true-story movie about the 2008 meltdown of the housing market. Unscrupulous real estate companies sold millions of subprime mortgages to clueless buyers for homes they couldn't afford. Then greedy bankers bundled and sold the doomed loans to other entities that turned around and sold them yet again.
Even though the film goes to great -- and humorous -- lengths to dumb down labyrinthine financial deals, they are still pretty confusing to non-experts. Given the complexity, it is easy to understand how bankers could be confused too, except, well, isn't it their job to know everything about their financial products?