> And people make arguments like yours: lots of investors
> would buy anything with a AAA rating. This is true as far
> as it goes. But it ignores the larger point that was "hidden"
> in plain sight: *everyone* knew these investments would
> go bust if house prices fell. You really didn't need to read
> a 1400-page report to understand that. You could probably
> read it in the WSJ for $200 a year.
[...]
> If the answers to these [not quoted] questions are "no,"
> then you can't say the cause of the bubble was the hiding
> of risk.
To paraphrase Hegel, risk is always concrete. It's about variability, contingency, etc. So, to say that risk was not hidden, because "*everyone* knew these investments would go bust if house prices fell" is no good, because part of the risk resulted from not knowing exactly *when* and *how* these investments would go bust. (Now, I'm not rejecting your rejection of the theory that the "cause of the bubble was the hiding of risk." I'm just poking a hole in your argument rejecting such theory.)