CEO's need to maintain status quo - they need their multi-million dollar bonuses on top of their multi-million dollar salaries.

What better way to ''keep it coming''.

America may want to step back and assess whether Marx was correct concerning capitalist crises. In seeking truth from facts it appears America has taken the socialist path. Mr. Paulson, US Treasury Secretary, recently stated that his "freeze" plan addressing the global subprime crisis does not abrogate contracts but is necessary to prevent a market failure. However, investor's contracts seem to take precedent - he ignores the contracts between banks and homeowners. He is tranferring wealth from investors to debtors (not counter intuitively in this case) in order to save the investment marketplace. The Fed can then step in to save the lending marketplace with future rate cuts. Yet another macro control crisis - individual corporations targeting poor people with disregard to suitability and 'Know Your Customer' just to make a buck, even if in the aggregrate these actions destabilize the system as a whole. In this state managed economic scenario everyone wins - the poor, corporate investors, lending institutions, investment bank packagers, hedge funds, etc. It seems as a practical matter that socialism has won the day - this day anyway. The only losers in the scenario are responsible homeowners who paid (and still have) higher fixed rates for safety. Punters of the world unite ! It seems global regulators are the weakest link in the capitalist system: they did not see the savings and loan crisis / latin debt crisis / asian contagion / sub prime / insider trading etc etc etc. Then the necessity of Fed / Treasury action. It even took one man - Elliot Spitzer (then New York State Attorney General), on his own initiative, to do the SEC's job for them with insider trading. They need to get thinking economists on board at the regulators or have periodic industry symposiums to assess systemic macro risk. If they already do, it's obviously not working. Look at the consequences - Morgan Stanley is now effectively 10% owned by the Communist Party of China and Singapore, Saudia Arabia and UAE had to bail out some other major players. We're talking systemic insolvency here and a macro transfer of financial / economic and political clout. A capitalist crisis indeed.

This is exactly what happened to the Ottoman Empire. I don't know, maybe getting split up will be good for this country.

AuhhhHH, Has Mr. Market sent a nasty, viscious Margin Call to Mother Merrill??? AuuhhHHH.

Is that like, secret code for selling out to foreign parties/governments? When the roof finally caves in on this larceny-fest, it's gonna be ugly...motto for 09: DE-globalization.

It's always a good and forthright sign when one of the bastions of American free enterprise has to go selling its ass(ets) to some foreign government........ that how by-god bad it is!

CitiBank could soon become Shanghi Bank, and Merrill should be Lynched. I wouldnt shed a tear if those theiven bastards went under. Except thousands would lose jobs, [many deserve too] and the upper level management and CEO would leave with millions in the bank, and Im sure an iron clad platinum parachute. But at least they would be stopped, or at least delayed in their theft of their customers money.

They are not borrowing money but selling equity in their respective businesses.

A drop in interest rates works better for domestic borrowers borrowing domestic currencies. Borrowing foreign money means they will earn less on deposited funds while still paying the higher interest rates on the more successful foreign currencies. Combine that with the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar and it's a lose-lose situation.
I manage our household finances better than these clowns manage these corporations. Expect runs on these banks any time soon.