It wasn't a "perfect storm"--It was a 20mph wind hitting a House of Cards.

[European Socialist]

Our financial institutions committed fraud, plain and simple, with nothing else to blame for the collapse.

[cliffordu]

1. Exactly right.

[Idealism]

2. You would be very, very angry if you knew the whole of it, Sir!

[patrice]

3. America has been financially Raped and Plundered ON PURPOSE.

Past performance is not a gaurantee of future returns BUT the odds on those returns ARE entirely different in a game of musical chairs, especially when most participants don't know that the chairs are disappearing.

[Hydra]

4. It wasn't even 20 mph winds

It was a guy with a sledgehammer that hit the house of cards at the precise moment specified.

[loudsue]

5. You've got that right. This whole "melt down" has been THEFT by

the "ruling class" plain and simple.

I'm seething with anger, every day, over what is being done to me and my fellow Americans. Cops shooting hand-cuffed people, no trial by jury for the poor young man, but we are told to suck it up and let justice be done for the cop. No justice for the peasants....only justice for the "authorities"??? And then this economic giveaway to the banks. Merry Chrismas, ruling class!!! Fuck you, peasant tax payers.

And remember...Obama's been going along with each & every bailout.

There's the "ruling class", and then there's those of us who are supporting their lifestyles. They get "justice", we get shot in the back.

It's time we got this country turned around.

[earth mom]

6. It took what, DAYS, for them to get their 700 BILLION dollar bailout?

The entire thing was planned well in advance, no doubt about it.

Wall Street cooked their books, had their buddies in Congress & the WH perform some smoke & mirrors for the masses and voila the biggest theft of the American people ever. :grr:

[xiamiam]

9. AND the green light to lend trillions in low interest loans to ????..well they wont tell us yet..

that in itself is outrageous..and it has all happened and is happening in the last three months...mind boggling...well, not all of it...add it to the war profiteering, bogus contracts, overcharging, oil futures speculators...who I am suspect are all friends of Dick Cheney..and voila..a country in deep shit, unrecognizable almost, with blood on our hands, families on the street, and aching hearts..and broke....

[kurt_cagle]

7. Actually, it was more like an earthquake

A series of tectonic shocks:

1) Prime lending rate left too low too long in response to the perceived impact of 9/11 and the Tech Recession of 2001-2003
2) Lending system pumped and primed to encourage increased home ownership resulted in too many poor quality mortgages and loans
3) Trade imbalances due to outsourcing and rampant low cost buying of Chinese goods
4) The first tremors of Peak Oil caused the price of oil to rise to $150 a barrel, causing a significant shock to the global economy
5) Poorly regulated reinsurance and hedge funds markets assumed low risk meant no risk, failed to see Black Swans
6) The Iraq War drained billions of dollars of liquidity from the system, making it much more difficult to cover losses when they finally did occur.

I'd say the financial institutions were responsible for about 30% of this, and of this, maybe 10% can be attribute to outright theft and fraud. However, the situation is far more complex, and there's plenty of blame to spread around.

[European Socialist]

8. OK , That too--But I still think Banks were selling hamburg at steak prices

without telling the customers that caused the problem and Madoff was just selling empty containers.

[CoffeeCat]

10. Good points....

I think this is going to be about a 8.0 on the Richter Scale, when all is said and done.

You mentioned the iraq war and the billions spent on it.

Between the billions missing from the Iraq war and the hundreds of billions that are unaccountable from
the bailout, I get the distinct feeling that the elites have been socking away some reserves, because
they knew damn well an economic collapse would happen.