I'm sure someone here has already addressed this, but if not, let's put the blame right where it belongs: From a news story yesterday

"Mr. Sloan traces a Goldman Sachs-arranged collateralized mortgage obligation. He shows how truly toxic waste was sold to overly eager investors who now have major charge-offs...Goldman Sachs was injecting dangerous financial products into the world"s commercial bloodstream for years. It might have sold very roughly $100 billion of the stuff...on a scale of billions even when Henry M. Paulson Jr., the current Treasury secretary, led the firm.

The point to bear in mind is that as Goldman was peddling C.M.O."s, it was also shorting the junk on a titanic scale through index sales " showing how horrible a product it believed it was selling."

So let's get this straight--The MSM and your local mortgage guys want to blame greedy stupid consumers for taking really bad mortgage deals, right? But we find out that this all started at the top, the rules were set aside on qualifying in order that Goldman and others could package these "TOXIC" investment instruments, which they then SHORTED, making even more profit and sticking everyone else with the bad debt. Oh, and their boss through much of this is now the current Sec. of the Treasury.

Can you say collusion? I knew that you could!!!

Is that about right?

Well I'm OK. I have my Uzi, rosary beads and Krugerrands. I'm ready to roll.

It's not actually a crisis, but a theft, a huge bad loan Ponzi scheme. If the Fed keeps feeding it, the last one in (U.S. taxpayers) will be holding the empty bag.
Look for Ben Bernanke to do just that.

Decisions, decisions:

Cut the rate and help our domestic financial system, over-extended home owners, and indebted consumers?

or

Continue the ability to finance the debt?

Hmm? What will the FED do and who will be sacrificed? Bernanke's paradox.

Looks like the greed driving capitalistic types are finally seeing what their version of capitalism really does. To bad though our Gov will eventually bail them all out with tax money, uhmmm , more correctly I should say borrowed money to be paid with future taxes. Greed and Capitalism , American style that is, has caused more problems than anything else in the US. from the stock market crash in 29 to todays fall, its been there leading the way.
Do I have an answer? Hell no, but I can see that continuing on this way isnt going to help either. The rich get rich, and if they do happen to lose some money, the tax payer is there to refill their coffers for them each an every time. Rewarding them for being total morons and thieves. I have no love for Our style of capitalism, which is nothing more than socialism for the rich. That in now way helps the country as a whole, its only dragged it down again and again with an occasional highly subsidized success so they can toot their horns and beat their chest. Even though its all artificially propped up by the tax payer and worker. Whats left of us that is.

I had to give Jim Rogers credit for calling, at least some spades, a spade. Must be horrible for him though. His whole life is tied to making money in a stock market he now professes to no longer believing in.....I'm trying to make that work. Some of us learned during and after the dot/com bubble, just how manipulated and bogus the markets truly are. Warren Buffet is the market's "Token" winner (a la Vegas). "You've got to allow a few winners if you want them to keep coming in". Poor Buffet, actually thinks he's done this all on his own. He's the finest investment wall street ever made. Sheeple flock to his seminars and then run back and fight for a place at the railing to stand and throw money at what Buffet is buying. Only problem is buffet buys in millions of shares and makes thousands of pennies in profit. Lets see the little guy buy in millions of shares....like I said, buffet is the best investment wall street ever made...and I do mean made. If it's that easy, how come there is only one buffet?? Oh, he is THAT uniquely singular in character,craft, intellect, guile and ???? a callibre, up untill the birth of warren, otherwise reserved for .... dare i say it????? yes i dare....jesus. OOOOHHH, now see, that 'splains everything.

To mrcontinental's point : The Dollar run is on !

Look at the right hand side of the graph. It fallls off the chart!
http://rs.rgemonitor.com/blog/setser/229071

A piece in 'How the World Works" explains it in layman's terms:
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/11/28/foreign_captal_inflows/

Leverage, leverage, leverage ...

Our economy is to the point where even new debt creates less and less real growth. We produce less and less material wealth for more and more financial profit sucking the very value out of our economy and our currency.

On any given day the hedge funds, financiers and investment banks make more trades than brokers or individuals, whip sawing markets to and fro for profits from pure speculation that has little to do with real investment.

As real investment declines, the economy is left an empty shell subject to the mercilous privatization that leaves employees, commmunities and states ever the poorer and speculators ever the richer.

All this is possible through the leverage of our banking system and the elimination of regulation for the benefit of a financial system that, instead of facilitating production, is vandalising the economy of its productive capacity.

The old Wall Street Bulls throw in the towel.It"s all falling apart as the financial bloodbath continues...

Last week was another major turning point in the worldwide financial debacle as prominent investors like George Soros and Jimmy Rogers pronounced the end of the U.S. dollar.

Bloomberg reported that Rogers in an interview from Singapore where he has moved his family and business, is urging investors to get out of the dollar. He was quoted as saying, "If you have dollars, I urge you to get out. That's not a currency to own.'' ¦The dollar fell 9.5 percent this year against a basket of six major currencies as a housing slump slowed the economy and losses stemming from sub-prime mortgage defaults spread among U.S. banks."

Rogers noted that he was shifting out of all his dollar assets and "plans to buy commodities, Japanese yen, the Chinese yuan and the Swiss franc."

Rogers also called Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke "a total fool." Rogers pointed out that Bernanke actually "said Americans who buy only American goods are not affected if the value of the U.S. dollar goes down. I was terrified," adding "If you only buy American products and the dollar goes down, the price of oil goes up, copper goes up, wheat goes up,'' he said. "That affects you. He doesn't understand the economy as far as I can see.'' (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aXH9wCx1oydw)

Last week equities were down for seven consecutive days. Furthermore, there were seven consecutive closes in the S&P 500 below its 200-day moving average " an event that has not occurred since the Great Depression.

It was a week of more signals that we are beyond the point of no return.

And there was more consensus from these old Wall Street bulls who threw in the towel since they understand that a collapse is coming sooner than expected.

When Bush bragged about this being an ownership society we should have asked who the owners were going to be.

Don't worry, big mommy gubmit gonna save ya.

"Iraq War debt problem drags down rest of economy" would be more honest.

It's just part of Bush-Cheney's MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: creating a "nanny state for the rich" and war-profiteer, disaster-profiteer corporate welfare queen pals.

"Mission accomplished!"

"Mission accomplished!"

"Mission accomplished!"

Enjoy it! na-na-na-naaaaah naaaaah!

Abolish the FED!

This vestige of the financial systems of the Middle Ages allows the banks to produce credit "out of thin air" and lend it at a profit. They lend to consumers, businesses, investors, speculators (such as hedge funds), and to federal, state, and local governments. Under the banking laws, they generate this credit against a small "reserve base" consisting of customer deposits, government debt, overnight deposits from corporations and government agencies, and even"as has been well-documented"by laundering the proceeds of drug dealing and other types of crime.

The dependence of economic life on debt has assured that there has been a steady flow of wealth from the producing economy of goods and services into the financial web which surrounds it. Debt from lending at interest grows at an exponential rate.

Further, every period of economic growth in the last generation has been largely a bank-created bubble. Each time a bubble bursts, the financiers gain more wealth by buying assets at bankruptcy prices. The latest is the housing bubble.

Now we are about to see the bursting of an even larger bubble consisting of stocks and other business assets. In fact, the financiers are now positioning themselves to take advantage of a broad economic collapse.

Control of wealth by high finance is the main reason the bounty of science and technology has not assured a better life to the majority of the people of the world.

Politicians stand by and do nothing. In fact their campaigns are financed by the monetary elite. Should any of them mention economic themes that are even remotely "populist," they are immediately denounced by the financier-controlled press.

Despite the power of industrial processes which have the capability of providing a decent living to everyone in the world we instead see every more people enslavened by the banking elite and standards of living decreasing rather then increasing. This must not continue because we ALL will one day wake up with NOTHING.

No one was forced to buy a house they couldn't afford, nor to take out an exotic loan - the buyers were just as greedy as anyone else. Once you dump all the folks that bought 2nd homes, refied out of a decent loan they could afford, bought more house than they could afford, lied about income on their applications, lied about it being a primary residence - who's left to help - not many. What about all the phony nouveau riche that HELOCed, refied, spent like there is no tomorrow and now whine they can't pay their mortgage. Let them sell the toys, sell all the fancy designer clothes, electronics, furniture and pay their damn bills. Plenty of people ran up their credit cards and then refied to pay them off. Many in mortgage, real estate and construction made big bucks and blew it all instead of saving anything. I'll be damned if I'll waste my sympathy on greedy idiots. This was all done voluntarily - there's been plenty of news for nearly 2 years about the bubble bursting yet people continued to buy houses that were doomed to devalue. If people want to look at the problems in this country they need to start by looking in the mirror. Start living within your means and stop going on endless spending sprees. Start setting an example for your children about valuing character and accomplishment instead of fame and wealth. Very few people were frauded in this mess. All the big boys at the top played with all the chumps that stuffed their money into "investments" because some idiot sold them on the idea that it's an ownership society. Everyone fell for blame the poor and illegals and partied on. Man up everyone and take care of your own individual mess.