People think of subprime lending as being the lending bubble of the late 2000's, but there was all kinds of stupid lending going on. The company I'm working for has been flipped a couple of times by private equity partnerships, and on the last flip, took on so much debt that it took less than two months to get where it could not make the monthly payment on the bank loans. At the time banks were lending seven time EBITDA, and there weren't many companies that could both pay the loans off and make any sorts of investments towards the future when stuck with that kind of debt.