Watch this if you want to see in more technical terms how they screwed this up so badly.  There's some hidden problems here that have not been talked about by the press, like the fact that a lot of this bad debt is being held off-shore, and it's debt that's never going to be worth anything. 

http://www.mymoneyblog.com/ archives/2008/02/subprime-l oan-crisis-explained-by-car toon-stick-figures.html&nbs p;