Then somebody peeked. It was like the Emperor's new clothes. When someone said, "Hey! there's nothing there!" it all started collapsing like a house of cards. Worse than a house of cards. With that, at least you have the cards to pick up.
It was so pervasive, into every nook and cranny of the World's economy, that no financial institution was spared. Falling dominoes is too mild a description.
Crash. Meltdown. Collapse. Ruin. Those are the words we hear, but are just beginning to understand. Another generation is about to learn what the word Depression means.
US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, formerly of Goldman Sachs, knew it was coming, and tried to cover by inoculating some, but not all, financial institutions with injections of cash. The ones he didn't, collapsed, toppling Wall Street giants, which in turn plunged Global Stock Markets into panic. Those "too big to fail," were falling.
American financial giants had peddled junk to everyone. Junk. And the World's banks became junkies. None of them knew how much of Wall Street's viral infection was inside their investment portfolios. What's worse, they didn't know how much was in someone else's portfolio. If they made uncollectible loans to others, they might also topple. So they froze, afraid to take astep in any direction. And things only got worse.
Hank Paulson, with help of Federal Reserve's Ben Bernanke, are flipping through the blank pages of their Economics Book, trying to write the next Chapter before anyone catches on that they don't know what they're doing.
Former FED Chair Alan Greenspan testified before Congress that he had no idea this could happen, even after he was warned time and time again. It was a complete surprise to Alan that Free Markets DO NOT operate in their own self-interest.
Self-regulation is dead. Reaganomics is dead. Trickle down is dead. Derivatives are dead. Good riddance.
When I came into this World, seven months before Pearl Harbor, America provided a moral imperative for all to look up to. Here at the ending of my life, America is providing a moral degeneracy for all to curse.
Tens of Trillions of dollars have been stolen in a Global Confidence Game. Wall Street polluted our Planet with their Junk.
Why hasn't someone been arrested?
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