Eds. Yasuyuki Fuchita, Richard J. Herring, Robert E. Litan. Once heralded as a financial innovation to diversify risk and enable Wall Street to finance Main Street, securitization helped create the subprime mortgage meltdown of 2006. In this implosion, debt was absorbed by a concentrated group of financial entities, and in 2008 credit markets consequently froze. So why were securities backed by subprime debt deemed so desirable? And what is the future of securitization? In "Prudent Lending Restored", noted economists Yasuyuki Fuchita, Richard Herring, and Robert Litan bring together a top-flight group of financial experts to answer these all-too-timely questions. Examining the growth of complex securitized structures in the United States and other markets, the authors provide a time line of key events and offer an explanation for the resulting financial crisis. They argue that flawed financial engineering and a lack of transparency incentivized risky lending, while credit rating agencies failed to analyze securities. They also examine the reactions of the central banks and provide a survey of crisis-generated litigation through October 2008. From this analysis, "Prudent Lending Restored" offers suggestions on how we can reform securitization, including a solution to insure the mortgage market against default risk. The book provides strategies to increase transparency and encourage more prudent lending. Thus through reform the securitization process might have a brighter future, where borrowers and lenders reap the benefits of inexpensive, accessible loans, without causing systemic damage to the economy.