The rise of securitization transactions did not only disproportionately increase banks’ lending activities; it also created strong incentives for banks to focus on subprime and risky loans. In fact, banks could gain substantially more income by
selling subprime loans to be securitized into private-label MBS than selling prime loans to be securitized into agency MBS. This trend is documented by the increasing share of subprime loans(Table 1). In addition, subscribers had conflicting incentives in the securitization process:they had to undertake accurate due diligence of the financial products subscribed in order to understand the risks embedded in the financial products they would trade in the market, but during the ABS boom, they were also able to sell to outside investors the riskiest ABS tranches and avoid bearing any significant part of the risk. As a consequence, they started cutting costs and enhancing profits by undertaking quick and superficial due diligence,thus
imposing huge risks on investors who were actually buying black-box ABSs.