Securitization (the technique of repackaging debt and selling it on) has been around since the 18th Century.
I was building systems to manage repackaged lease hire debt in 1990 just as these instruments were taking off in the UK, ten years before Royal Bank of Scotland bought Nat West Capital Markets (which was when they got seriously into investment banking) and I was working at RBS Cap Markets fifteen years later when the ABN Amro CDO positions (that brought RBS to its knees) were taken onto the books but, hey, WTF do I know ?
Now I'm retired, I'm too busy doing WTF I want to get into an argument about the history of derivatives so I'm out