On Mar 18, 9:06*pm, Mason C wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:30:39 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

There follows that tiresome canard about generous mortgages in the U.S.
causing the world collapse of the financial system.

The system collapses because it was a house of cards -- the cards were
phoney money derivatives of various sorts being used as speculation
tools. *They and their market (if it can be said to be a "market") were
of unknown real value. *When crunch came to crunch, the bankers
had assets of unknown (but inflated) value on their balance sheets.
A genuine audit (impossible) would show many of them to be far
more "under water" than any billion home owners. *They had
blown up a vast bubble ($60 trillion maybe, who knows?).

Their bubble was pricked by the mortgage devaluations.


correct, and every time i hear some yahoo call them a asset, i stick
my finger down my throat. assets are something tangible, not a bet. i
have read that there maybe over a quadrillion dollars of these bets.
so if these paper bets are really a asset, then they should be able
to sell them, or borrow against them. but they cannot, in most cases
they are probably worthless, and are backed by nothing.
which means the companies that own them are insolvent, and perhaps no
amount of outside money can save them. really, its about time to force
them into chapter 7, i think its 7, where they can come out
reorganized, without the baggage of these derivative bets, and the
lousy management who allowed this.


Mason Clark
*Greater America in the Age of Rebellion*http://frontal-lobe.info/greateramerica.html
*-- many excerpts you can see --