Well sub-prime derivative market was very profitable...until it wasn't. Besides, if GSE's actually went down from internal problems they would drag down the rest of the market.
Sub-primes were less than three percent of the secondary market, until Wall Street went hog wild with CDOs.
The newly invented CDOs were a hot commodity, and there weren't enough good risks to pack into them, and so Wall Street threw the underwriting laws of the Universe out the window, and began searching for more paper to cram into their CDOs. And this mean they needed more and more borrowers.
When you run out of good risk borrowers, and still want to lend more money out, then you inevitably lower your standards. THIS is what caused the crash.
The idea the banks were FORCED to lend, as the retards claim, is ourtight laughable. Every time I hear a tard say that, I immediately know they are a parroting rube who is completely clueless.
Lehman Brothers bought their own mortgage broker pipeline to keep the paper flowing in. And Fuld thought he had his risks covered by credit default swaps and CDO-squareds and all kinds of other bizarre shit. He also thought that if all else failed, the US government would not allow him to collapse.
He was wrong on every count.
And when some ignorant parroting rube in Congress asked him during the hearing how much the CRA had to do with Lehman failing, Fuld responded, "De minimus."