David Bowie Started the Economic Crisis

I was driving to the credit union the other day when I heard the XM DJ say that David Bowie was to blame for the credit crisis. Well, Ziggy may have been an influence on the music industry, but the banking industry???

That's exactly what the London newspapers are reporting. Turns out that Thin White Duke was taking financial bets in the form of bonds on his own royalties way back in 1997. Bowie was doing so well financially at that time, nor was his music--except for the old stuff. To be more specific, in 1997 Bowie introduced Bowie Bonds selling his future back catalogue royalties to fans. This is known as securitization the process of taking an illiquid asset, or group of assets, and through financial engineering, transforming them into a security, such as the Bowie Bonds. Another example of this is a mortgage-backed security (MBS), which is a type of asset-backed security that is secured by a collection of mortgages. You may have heard of these, since they are what is really fronting the blame for the economic downturn.

So an British economic expert, Evan Davies, claims that David Bowie's influence is so great that bankers everywhere took his idea and applied it to the mortgage industry. Isn't it great to finally have one person to blame?