Canadian Initiative

Washington Post takes a look at how Canada avoided financial crisis. I don’t, however, actually understand what they’re saying. The main point seems to be that Canada’s more tightly regulated mortgage market didn’t generate bad subprime loans. But though the subprime loans are at the root of the banking system’s crisis, the crisis is by no means limited to countries where bad loans were originated. Rather, a lot of banks seem to have gotten mixed up with assets that came from foreign countries. The housing boom itself seems to have been mostly a US/UK/Spain phenomenon, but the crisis is hitting hard in Switzerland, Italy, etc.