It was a process. You can go read this stuff, if you want? It goes back to Moodys and Goldman Sachs. Basically, well, here is a source that explains some of it:
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Do you get what happened? Goldman would get its securities rated AAA. The ones it could not get rated AAA, it would skim off and find things they could package with it to get them rated AAA. And then, the ones from that pile that they could not get rated AAA, they would skim off again and start the process over. They were selling garbage but making it look like gold, and these rating agencies were making the case for them. Meanwhile, since Goldman Sachs new these packages were going to fail, they bet against them knowing that they would stand to make huge masses of money. This put lots of people out of business. That's thousands of jobs down the toilet. So if you really care about the economy, that should piss you the **** off.
Call them stupid if you want, that's easy, but the real deal is they got defrauded. And Goldman Sachs went before Congress and lied about the whole thing.
*Edit to add:
I am being trolled so hard right now.