> 2008 was bad because the collective banks of the US realized trillions in mortgages were money on the books that wasn't real and was never going to be real A

> 2008 was bad because the collective banks of the US realized trillions in mortgages were money on the books that wasn't real and was never going to be real An even larger amount of money was placed on bets on whether those mortgages were real, as opposed to the mortgages themselves.