Some links regarding the financial crisis

Pretty interesting stuff really.
Market Oracle

Lots of interesting stuff on this too.

Survival Blog - Derivativies

Beware of stories of undeserving poor people holding bankers hostage with regulations and forcing them to approve loans. You can't blame this on the Community Reinvestment Act. That isn't going to fly.

http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2008/09/the_subprime_mortgage_crisis_a.php

The right wing is desperate to project this situation as a result of regulations. Anything to obscure the fact that a cornerstone of the right's catechism, that markets can and will self-regulate, is patently wrong. Fact is that is was the lack of regulations, including those demanding transparency and limiting the ability to leverage and securitize debt, that allowed these robbers to make their profits and leave the American taxpayer to pick up the pieces to the tune of $700 Billion.

http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2008/09/ny-times-makes-funny.html

Scroll down and read the lurid details and embrace the horror revealed in the articles.

http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/

The American people are going to get screwed. But I will be damned if I will sit quietly by and let those who profited not share in the pain of the train wreck they caused. Sorry mister CEO, CFO, and broker your going to have to give back the money. Your going to have to bleed with the rest of us.

Oh the humanity.

People used to smooth six figure incomes are suffering. Bullied by poor folk who force them to the loan counter using nanny state regulations as a club the bankers and brokers had no choice but to write those loans. And now these noble practitioners of the financial arts, who were obviously forced to do such unspeakable things, are suffering:
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"A lot of those people will have to sell their homes, they're going to cut back on the private jets and the vacations. They may even have to take their kids out of private school," said [Robert] Frank [of the Wall Street Journal]. "It's a total reworking of their lifestyle."

He added that it's going to be no easy task.

"It's going to be very hard psychologically for these people," Frank said. "I talked to one guy who had to give up his private jet recently. And he said of all the trials in his life, giving that up was the hardest thing he's ever done."
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From: http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2008/09/the_liberal_media_hastens_the.php

Sure a third of the population on the western gulf coast are hurting. And a third of the victims of Katrina are still displaced. But those are poor people. They are used to living by candlelight , waiting in line for water and eating MREs cold. That is pretty much how they live normally, right? For them it wasn't a big step down.

The people we should feel sorry for are the rich who can't afford to run the Learjet down to Cancun for a quick lunch and a tan anymore. Their children might even have to go to <gasp> public school. And how will they ever get into Harvard with that black mark on their record.

I say we set up a fund to help these people out. If everyone pitches in $100 we can get that Learjet to Cancun so their tan won't fade. Who is with me?