The only way that the American public would actually care about this case is if the NSA was sharing the data with the IRS. Then you might here a public outcry. All those ebay sells listed on your tax return?

Subprime lending -- a risk, return and correlation profile that are very distinct from money market + small enhancement lending. There are different tranches that you can choose from, ranging from AA to E or HR.

P2P lending may have differing relevance levels for people of different risk aversion classes, but modern portfolio theory (much of which is admittedly a crock) would argue that any asset w/some diversification value should make up some (perhaps small) part of people's portfolio.

I wouldn;t replace my USAA Performance First account w/ Prosper or Zopa lending, but I would put a chunk of my money in Prosper's sub sub prime borrowers.