[Tzimisce]

The European socialists were looking down on the poor stupid Americans and our captalist system a couple of weeks ago....

[ken21]

a laugh, isn’t it?

[VOA]

The European socialists were looking down on the poor stupid Americans
and our captalist system a couple of weeks ago....

And apparently invested heavily in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
stock!!!
(And trusted AIG to insure their bets)

I guess they FOOLISHLY believed all the ROT the US Government
and their functionaries (Franklin Raines, Barney Frank, Thomas Dodd,
etc.) pushed about how bullet-proof an investment in those GSEs were.

I'm not laughing at the Europeans/Asians/etc. that followed that
investment strategy.
The economic devastation wrought by the criminal action of some
government and private-enterprise gurus is likely to be widespread,
prolonged and PAINFUL.

Because (although you probably won't hear it in the real MSM)...
plenty of small local banks followed the same advice and were
even allowed to use those GSE investments, just like Treasury bills
to calculate their capitalization.
Because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were "secure".
Once those went south, the capitalization of some small banks evapororated...
forcing them to sell out to larger banks.
One small bank in Johnson City, TN was thus profiled in the Wall
Street Journal about a week ago.

In fact the WSJ even noted late last week that an agency called
"Farmer Mac" (honest, you can't make this up), like the small banks
had to recapitalize when their safe Fannie/Freddie stock went "poof".