Nowhere was this more evident than in the mortgage origination market, in which banking organizations and firms outside the banking supervision system were all originating mortgages but were subject to very different levels of oversight. •  I believe in the separation of banking and commerce.
The most important contributors to economic weakness have been sharp contractions in investment spending and equity prices as businesses and investors re-evaluated the profitability of capital spending and the productive capacity built up in the late 1990s.