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They can replace high interest rate credit card debt with lower interest rate mortgage debt. And it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The growing interface between high finance and lower-middle-class America was assumed to be good for lower-middle-class America. This new efficiency in the capital markets would allow lower-middle-class Americans to pay lower and lower interest rates on their debts.
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis

I have searched meanings for "efficiency" and even though I found the meaning of it, I couldn't understand what's the point being efficient so I might have wondered if there is different meaning to a word.

a) a situation in which a person, company, factory, etc. uses resources such as time, materials, or labour well, without wasting any (Cambridge Dictionary)
b) the quality or degree of being efficient (Merriam-Webster)

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  • If something is "efficient" it doesn't waste resources. Do you understand what "capital" means in "capital markets"? That's important to understanding how a "capital market" can be efficient.
    – ColleenV
    Commented May 25, 2021 at 13:27

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Another dictionary:
Merriam-Webster efficient

1 : productive of desired effects especially : capable of producing desired results with little or no waste (as of time or materials)
an efficient worker; efficient machinery

"This new efficiency in the capital markets would allow lower-middle-class Americans to pay lower and lower interest rates on their debts."

It was said that the conversion of other debt to mortgage debt was an efficiency that would produce the desired effect of a benefit for low- or middle-class people. That was the benefit expected (or at least claimed).

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  • Oh, I see. I thought in a way the word "efficiency" more focusing in "no waste", so I wondered what waste would be there if not convert loans that way.
    – ice man
    Commented May 25, 2021 at 13:46
  • There might be more or less efficient ways of converting loans, with more or less expense along the way. A market that increases fluidity of movement of funds, with less waste and expense along the way, would be more efficient. But I suspect that book is about 'efficiency' as a rationale for maneuvers that ended up in disaster for many.
    – Jack O'Flaherty
    Commented May 25, 2021 at 15:31

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