Pattern of excessive, fee-driven debt surfacing globally

It's becoming harder and harder to call the financial crisis "just a subprime mortgage crisis."

While mass subprime loan defaults would have been enough to create major balance sheet stress for selected U.S. banks (they have), what's becoming increasingly clear as the crisis enters its second year is that the bad debt and problematic lending was far from limited to the subprime sector. Economist Richard Felson said RGE Monitor founder Nouriel Roubini's forecast -- once viewed as extreme -- that a series of leverage bubbles would be unwound, across sectors, globally, "is proving to be accurate."