The Financial Tsunami: Sub-Prime Mortgage Debt is but the Tip of the Iceberg

"Even experienced banker friends tell me that they think the worst of the US banking troubles are over and that things are slowly getting back to normal. What is lacking in their rosy optimism is the realization of the scale of the ongoing deterioration in credit markets globally, centered in the American asset-backed securities market, and especially in the market for CDO’s—Collateralized Debt Obligations and CMO’s—Collateralized Mortgage Obligations. By now every serious reader has heard the term “It’s a crisis in Sub-Prime US home mortgage debt.” What almost no one I know understands is that the Sub-Prime problem is but the tip of a colossal iceberg that is in a slow meltdown."