chris pendley says he forged 4,000 bogus mortgage documents a day for major u.s. banks. and your previous experience in banking? >> none. [ticking] >> it started out as a mortgage crisis. then it slowly evolved into a credit crisis. now it's something entirely different and much more serious. >> this is a full-blown financial storm and one that comes around perhaps one every 50 or 100 years. this is the real thing. >> and much of what went wrong on wall street could be traced back to something called "credit default swaps." they were traded in a risky shadow market, and they were at the heart of the financial meltdown. [ticking] >> it has tentacles as wide as anything i've seen. i think, next to housing, this is the single most important issue in the united states and certainly the largest threat to the u.s. economy. >> meredith whitney was talking back in 2010 about a then- looming financial crisis involving state and local governments across the country. it was a debt crisis which some people believe could derail the recovery and require another big bailout package tha