were so exotic that even the guys who dreamed them up weren't quite sure if they could explain them and if you can't explain something, you don't understand it all that well, yourself.
Most of them were tied in one way or another to home mortgages or, to a lesser extent, commercial property. As time went on and the housing bubble grew in "hot" markets, the loans started getting shakier and shakier to lure people who didn't know what they were doing but jumped at the chance of owning their own homes took on obligations they didn't understand and had no way of meeting. Those loans were then chopped up, repackaged, and sold as income generating securities under various names.
A few people noticed what was going on, but most stopped at the projected return on investment, the name of the issuing institution, and thought they couldn't lose, a sure sign that they'd lose.
So that's basically it, nobody really knew what was going on and most of them didn't want to know. They just wanted a sure thing to generate income so they'd be closer to getting that corner office. When the For Sale signs started to outnumber the fdesperate fools and suckers by a significant amount and people had taken out risky loans in the hope of turning a quick profit in an overheated market couldn't pay ythe loan or sell, the whole thing collapsed
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