OK, so Renee’s piece on the economic crisis pretty much spoke to me on the most fundamental level imaginable. I’m one of those supposedly middle class people – with enormous negative assets (student debt), a degree that doesn’t matter (English + Russian Lit), and not much of a safety net. So this piece? Had me shaking. At least I’m abroad for now, I thought. At least I can afford healthcare over here. Now what about everyone else? Jay-sus.
How do we solve this thing? Well, we either execute Joe Sapien’s’ New Deal (it utilizes a little something called a “thunderbutt!”). Or else we just get Shia LaBeouf to defeat the crisis with a combination of knife-flicks and boyish charm.
Either than that, I’m all out of ideas.
Natalia A. 
…Lithium is free in Canada, so are heart transplants. If you want a reason to need either try Googleing “credit default swaps”. It’s the greyish economy behind the mortgage crisis. If these “bailouts” don’t work there’s a huge gaping financial hole between $20-50 Trillion dollars that no one is talking about yet… except for Time and 60 Minutes of course.
The thing that kills me is in the 60 Minutes piece last Sunday night, the guy who runs the “credit default swap” industry has no idea if it’s $20T or $50T…
I’m thinking that we hold up big signs that say ” Jump you assholes!” and if not, send a few up to “help” them out the window…
then get new guys, or girls or hell… pigs with lipstick.. to run the global economy…
oh wait… why not zero the credit out globally, give everyone an implant and then define credit scores by DNA…
It’s greed the malignent yet driving force of capitalism.
You need to try and regulate human greed which is very hard to do.
But it should have been a red flag with bank directors getting paid millions a month and getting a bonus on the basis of how many morgages they would sell.
Obviously someone was going to put people into homes they could not afford.
So he/she could grab those enormous bonuses.
Proper regulation should prevent such a melt down in the future.