It's G-20 time and I'm afraid we're in for a long night. Krugman says the world needs to work together on the economic meltdown even though the US still believes it's the only country that exists. Good luck, US! Lots and lots of people are coming to believe the news that capitalism is the latest God that failed. But our Wall Streeters persist! Once the economy gets on a even keel (if it ever does), these malefactors of great wealth will deregulate whatever Obama's /Geithner's regulations achieve.
How easy is it for the big timers on Wall Street to take your hard earned money? Let us count the ways. The biggest scam ever was the subprime mortgage business (1). Credit was so easy (2) that anyone with a pulse (3) was given a junk mortgage, these, in turn, were shoveled through the doors of the banks and insurers like AIG (4). Next, our best and brightest bankers prevailed (5) upon the rating agencies to label the junk as AAA securities. These “troubled assets” were then sliced and diced, securitized , leveraged 30x and sold around the world as if they were gold (6). The business was such a money machine that it was impossible to say no to it. When the housing bubble burst, people lost their life savings, and countries went down. (Take particular notice of the "securitization" part. This is the way they turn junk into gold. They can do this any day of the week, including Sundays: beware when Madoff or Summers knocks on your door!)
Capitalism has finally developed its own economic weapons of mass destruction: cdo's, quants, credit default swaps, securitization, mega-million dollar salaries. Combine this with the usual greed, fraud and avarice and you have a killer system. Except it will kill itself.
Is there a way out? Possibly. Energy wars have been and will be our undoing. That and our continuing policy of salvaging banks that are too corrupt to exist. Three simple ideas: cut our energy use in half, cut our military in half and let the BIG BANKS go down the tubes.
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