Prompted.... by lunacy

There is considerable irony in the August 8th Wall Street and Bay Street selloffs. It was on this date that several prominent crooks were in the spotlight. Richard M. Nixon quit the White House in the Watergate scandal in 1974 and Britain's Great Train Robbers, 15 thieves, made off with $7 million in 1963. 


Now to August 8, 2011.


Investors worldwide were spooked by a so-called rating agency, Standard and Poor's. But how soon politicians and pundits forget about or ignore S&P's trail of thieving, lies and corruption. 


S&P and its fellow specious rating services were key players, the main enablers, in the fraud that allowed banks to bundle and sell toxic assets, that caused the worldwide financial crisis in 2008. Those agencies had given their AAA+ blessing to the houses of cards, known as derivatives, from a mortgage system that was comically corrupt. A system, by the way, that has been wholeheartedly supported by the U-S government and the dense, self-serving politicians that run Washington.  


Lehman Brothers was the first banking domino to fall in 2008, followed by Wall Street's sheer panic and warnings of economic Armageddon. It begged for money and got it - $800 million from U-S taxpayers. Laughably and tragically, much of that money, within weeks, was doled out in the form of multi-million dollar bonuses, the most lavish ever. 


So it is ironic and hypocritical for Standard & Poor's to now downgrade a federal government debt that it was central in helping to balloon to $14.4 trillion. Not only that, but the senseless demotion of U-S Treasury notes (bonds) has spooked stock markets, which have little to do with the bond market. The bond market held up quite nicely today. Why? Because the main creditors, China and Japan, still have every reason to believe that the U-S will honor its obligations, as it has done for two centuries. They know the world needs a strong, solvent United States. 


In the Great Train Robbery police tracked down all but three of the gang through fingerprints. Richard Nixon scurried from office before he could be impeached.


But the busted financial model in the U-S apparently will carry on as if government debt doesn't matter. No elected official has the fortitude to do the right thing. 


Its sad to watch Americans still living the delusion that the U-S of A is bless by God and is the Greatest Country The World Has Ever Known.