This is a very short, very clear paper by a couple of very mainstream economists that is basically an original research addendum to Doug's great article "After the Housing Crisis" in the last Left Business Observer:
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/rogoff/files/Is_The_US_Subprime_Crisis_So_Different.pdf
What Doug put into an American historical context they put into an international comparative context over the last 30 years, during which time there have been 18 big banking crisis in advanced industrial countries.
Those of us who enjoy the intellectual disreputable activity of "charting" will love the chart on page 6. It's downright vertiginous.
They also have a nice quip in the conclusion, that the run-up to the post-subprime banking crisis looks a lot like the petro-dollar recycling boom of the late 70s that led to the third-world debt banking crisis of the early 80s. The only difference is that this time we recycled the money to a developing country in the US, namely the subprime borrowers. But the effect on the banks was the same.
Michael