Alan Greenspan cut interest rates after the attacks to encourage Americans to spend more. As a result of the reduced interest rates, mortgage rates also were reduced, encouraging many Americans to buy homes. As the number of homes purchased went up, the prices of the home went up. Home prices got so high, many people could not afford to buy them, to fix this California created the sub-prime mortgage. These new mortgages allowed Americans who did not qualify for traditional mortgages, due to insufficient income or poor credit, to be able to buy a home. These sub-prime mortgages were then packaged into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) and became a popular commodity on Wall Street. With such a high demand, Wall Street was trying to get lenders to make more home loans, which enticed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to become involved in the sub-prime mortgage market. Lenders soon started making no income, no asset mortgages. And with lenders ready and willing to lend more capital, homeowners began tapping into their home equity to go shopping. Wall Street quickly developed a new security, the CDO, to package and sell to their customers around the world. These CDO’s were given inappropriate top ratings by the rating companies, and investors scurried to buy them. Unfortunately, most investors did not understand the CDO and…