For those who didn’t see it, there was a report in UK tabloid the Daily Mirror (see http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/01/12/david-bowie-s-back-catalogue-bonds-may-have-started-the-credit-crunch-115875-21036649) promoting a new TV series hosted by the BBC’s former economics editor Evan Davis. The show plans to explain the factors behind the global financial crisis (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/programs/b00gtljy).
Davis has a knack of explaining complex concepts simply; in the first program, he blames several of the normal suspects and, somewhat intriguingly, music legend David Bowie. He argues that the issuance of Bowie bonds back in 1997 kick-started the concept of securitisation; the banks then took the concept to a new level with disastrous results. To quote Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust: “He took it all too far, but boy could he play guitar.”