Reply #8: If you were able to catch Sixty Minutes tonight - they laid it all out

[truedelphi]

The problem is not at all the sub prime mortgages.

There were not enough marginally incomed folks buying houses to endanger our entire economy. Set it back 10 to 15 % sure, but not rip it apart by its gizzards.

What is undermining our economy are these damn "Credit Default Swaps" And those instruments were the insurance policies that were SOLD to the investors that bought up the SIV's (An SIV was a collection of huge bundles of many of the sub prime mortgages. Some of these bundles were sold over 35 times - sort of like if you Had twenty bucks, but you loaned it to yourself so now you have forty, so now you loan it to yourself and now have eighty, etc)

Now the Swaps were actually insurance so that no one would ever lose anything should any single bundle of sub prime mortgages default.

And as insurance they should have been regulated. Had they been regulated - they would have probably been regulated out of existence. But they weren't insurance - nudge nudge - they were SWAPS -- get it!! And as SWAPS - no one of the many regulators appointed to oversee insurance policies and their sales ever bothered to intervene and see that this mess was stopped before it brought the country down.

The whole mess stinks to high heaven. If you and me go to "Humboldt County" er I mean, "Non Tokers County" to buy some er, let's call it OREGANO, do you think we would be left without regulation? Especially if we drove home in a stolen car at speeds in excess of 115 mph??

As far as I can tell the whole thing that has gone on in Wall Street for the last three years - it is nothing more than a rackets operation. And then a bigger rackets operation was the House and Senate voting to take the money away from the middle incomed person and help the recovery of the very people who did this crap.

And last week, before the WHolesale theft of our economy out from under us - I mean last week's bill means BYE BYE Social Security ! were we not being told by the same experts that brought us this mess that the only way for our economy to avoid tanking was for this noxious Bailout Bill.

But guess what - our economy just tanked!! Even though we gave the country away!