Not only is Andrew Lo not a student, he is a prolific and well regarded professor at MIT *who also runs a quantitative hedge fund*. So his paper on what happened is well worth reading.
Great Article Psytrade, I didnt understand the complexities of the CDO products, but this article gives a better picture of where all of this comes from . What a derrivative product "cdo's of cdo's of cdo's !!!" No wonder the market is doing what it is doing , it looks to me based on the article that we are experiencing large amounts of de-leveraging... I found the original poster's article on this site http://epchan.blogspot.com/ which has some interesting articles , the guy who runs this site is a quant..
Yes it is true that Lo is not a student. His student days were at Wharton. His academic travels have been notable. Usually he juxtaposes an idea of his against a traditional precept. I am familiar with the faculty/student modus at Tech. Roughly speaking, they do the grind there and it keeps problems alive and well for considerable periods of time. Rubberstamping is not a good characterization; it probably would be better described as keeping the home fires glowing. More nudgey than fudgey.