The Eerie Echo Of 2007: It Really Is Bear Stearns, All Over Again
While there are numerous and often conflicting opinions about the underlying causes that lead up to the Great Financial Crisis, most agree that the proximal catalyst which finally exposed all the overvalued, illiquid "cockroaches" and confirmed that subprime "is not contained" in the process unleashing the chain of events that culminated with the collapse of Bear, Lehman and AIG, was the failure of one of Bear Stearn's credit-focused hedge funds in the early summer of 2007.
Here is how the conventional wisdom recalls this development: