Todays lesson

"Jamie" wrote in message news:w6qal.15274$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe03.iad...

Looks more like a ponzi scheme to me.

Cheers

I heard a documentary on Radio Australia, "A Current Affairs Special" on what caused this mess, where they interviewed several bond traders and "financial engineers". One of the bond traders brought up an interesting cause. New accounting rules require that their holdings be accounted as "Mark to Market" (or something like that) where their investments have to be valued at the latest market price even if they have no intention of selling at that price. Long term investments end up showing up a short term losses. Especially if somebody else has had to liquidate their holdings of the same financial instrument in an emergency.

A really bad example of positive feedback. Transparency gone wrong.

Another observation. The guilty parties are laying down the thickest smoke screen of spin that I've ever seen. The "those damn poor folks who bought houses they can't afford caused this" and "the bailout will cause a depression" should be taken with a grain of salt. Don't trust anything that the right wing noise machine starts chanting in unison.

Mark Zenier snipped-for-privacy@eskimo.com Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)

This explains your pissy attitude.

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There are two kinds of people on this earth: The crazy, and the insane. The first sign of insanity is denying that you're crazy.

I've heard that reported elsewhere as well.

Because it was really the leftist weenies who caused the problem ;-)

...Jim Thompson