Lew Renieri etc

from recent post.

The world began to change in the late 1970s, when Salomon Brothers, in the person of a banker named Lewis Ranieri, pioneered the mortgage security. This showed a flash of genius. Even though each unit of real estate continued to be a slow-moving, illiquid asset, Ranieri perceived that the underlying mortgages could be traded as rapidly as stocks and bonds. Instead of keeping his mortgages in a drawer, the banker on Main Street could unload his risk by selling them to Salomon. The banker was thus converted from a long-term lender to a mere originator of loans.