As to solutions? Well there don’t really seem to be any. The money is gone (credit was created on the back of unworthy assets and insolvent debtors), it’s just a question of who get’s bailed out first and whether we revert to an agrarian society at this point.

The paths are uncharted. I hope they figure out a way to keep the Ponzi scheme going long enough for me to die of old age… but I don’t expect it.

Joeblo

These people are cleaver, not smart as they will burn down everyone house to save their own.

I started my business career back in the early 70s/7th grade, doing totals in my mothers book keeping/accounting/printing business. To see a red, green or black bound ledger still reminds me of youth lost. Since that I have worked in OEM, Supply and Sales, to the executive level. In all that time the most prevalent observation I made was the moral loss one needed to rise to the top.

We are experiencing a economic meltdown but, feel it all started with the moral one.

Skippy

yeah, i feel like the little boy calling out the “king is naked”. I don’t have an advanced degree and have never worked for a wall-street firm but when I’m wading in bull-sh*t up to my arm pits I can figure out where the stench is coming from.

I see 15,000 expert economists using the all latest computer-based sophisticated statistical analytic programs and modeling techniques, all couched in insider jargon and technical blather, that we dumb general public yokels just couldn’t possibly understand. And how many of these gurus saw this crisis coming? Having no shame, many of these so called experts have the audacity to share their deep understanding of these matters in the comment section of blogs such as this.

Hundreds of thousands of accountants purporting to provide services by way of financial statements that arms investors with useful information on predicting a company’s future cash flows. Knowing full well, the general investing public wouldn’t know what an accumulated adjustment account is for, haven’t the faintest idea about the assumptions that are made in calculating deferred tax assets\liabilities, nor the journal entries required booking transactions surrounding hedges, Or intelligently weighing the merits of so called fair-value accounting, as if there is a single objective value that can be assigned to an asset on the balance sheet date, that has any real meaning for an investor. SEC, Sarbanes-Oxley, GAAP, IAS, transparency. yeah I smell bull-sh*t here, how about you?

I see wall street financial analysts, apparently setting on their thumbs, while disasters such as the internet bubble, enron and worldcom type scandals, as well as the mortgage-backed security mess and looming credit default swaps crisis have literally popped up all around us, destoying our children’s future. Lacking in any shame, they still make their regular appearances on CNBC Squak Box, sharing their expert opinions without even blushing. Risk management with Synthetic CDOs implemeted with credit default swaps, special purpose entities, and leveraged super tranches, indeed! I smell bull-sh*t, how about you?

And then there are your global software companies that keep busy cornering the technology market. Threatened by open standards that just might unleash a torrent of technological innovation, with the promise of creating “real” wealth and improving quality of life around the globe, these technology behemoths have been busy hijacking the standards setting bodies and spuing out tons of marketing hyberbole, convincing the general programming community that without their proprietary software frameworks and solutions, information solutions are just not possible. And I’ll be darned if all the IT customer base isn’t buying into it. Just, what in the hay has the anti-trust division of the Justice departments been doing with themselves over the last 30 years?

I keep reading the comments on this blog, searching for someone who is proposing concrete solutions. You got any? Comments that demonstate ones deep knowledge of the credit default swap market after it tanks are about as useful as nipples on a male pig. Risk management, hah! Let’s see we’ve got liquidity risk, business risk, credit risk, systematic risk. How about stupidity risk?

I’m not very smart skippy, but given the conditions on wall street, it looks like I’ve got plenty of company.

Avg John

But we do not know how big the CDO market is – Only a guess.

When will the problem be realized?

Answer those questions – And you will know when life gets back to normal.

This Yeats poem may seem over-dramatic, but who knows…:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Granted, the issue is just too complicated to demagogue. But it can’t be too complicated to regulate…