The financial turmoil that erupted earlier this year in the US subprime housing market was "an accident waiting to happen" and could have taken place in any other sector, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said here Sunday.
"Credit spreads across all global asset classes had become compressed to clearly unsustainable levels," Greenspan told an audience at the World Bank's International Finance Corporation.
"Something had to give. If the crisis had not been triggered by a mispricing of securitized US subprime (high-risk) mortgages, it would have eventually erupted in some other sector of our market," the former Fed chief said.
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