> Financial Terror? Soros?
Duh. It seems to me it is the height of regulatory foolishness to have allowed fiscal instruments (e.g., the credit default swaps) in which 3rd parties can make highly leveraged profits by wreaking havoc on our economic system.
In engineering, we call it a marginally stable system. Just a slight push out of equilibrium, and the whole thing comes unglued.
I am confident that our enemies are exploiting derivatives to this end.
It is like trying to bring in 50 stars of 10 solar masses strategically placed outside the solar system to stabilize the asteroid belt and prevent certain doom scenarios. Far from bringing stability, you will wake up one day and find the earth on an orbit headed out to Pluto and beyond. Highly nonlinear systems with large forcing function always go haywire. The question is not if, but how soon, and why hasn't it happened yet. The question is not by what accident the train went off the track, but by what miracle with all the springs and bounces and jostling and starting and stopping it manages to stay on the track.
It is leverage that lead to the 1929 crash.